It was likely to happen eventually, Zend has announced a PHP certification. Despite having just announced the release of PHP 5, the certification will only focus on PHP 4. The thinking behind that seems to be that it will still be awhile before PHP 5 becomes wide spread. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this idea. In general I have really mixed feelings about certification because some people are able to get certified that don’t really “know” anything about what they got certified in. On the other hand not everyone who has a certification falls into that category.
For some additional info on Zend’s PHP certification you can read comments by Chris Shiflett, John Coggeshall and Marco Tabini
On a related note, Zend has secured an additional $8 million investment. They now have a new U.S. headquarters in Cupertino, California. I wonder how far from Apple HQ they are?