I've passed my VCP 510 back in Nov 2012 and the reason why I took this certification was due to the fact that it does not expire. They just took things into their own hands and changed the expiry to 2 years which is rather short and unprofessional in my own opinion.
Comptia did changed their certification expiry to 3 years back in 2011 and it only affects those who have passed the exams after the announcement. Those who are certified before the announcement date are not affected. They wanted to run this ruling on all existing certified professionals during the time of announcement but reverted the rules after getting too much complains and risking a class action suit against them.
Well, I will not bother to complain but I will just let it expire and boycott from further courses with vmware education. Who knows whether will they change the expiry to 1 year on a later date. If I am being certified to repair honda vtec engines, means that I am able to repair the current version of vtec engines. Unless the technology changes in future design that makes my skills obsolete. But I am still skillful to repair engines designed during the time when I passed my certification.
I will be happy if they let time does the expiration of the certifications rather than expiring it based on the date that you have been certified. Alot of companies will still be using exsi 5.1 in 2015 which is when my certificate expires. I do not see the need to recertify myself to managed the same version of virtualization technology which I am currently using for the sake of doing so. Unless companies are switching over to exsi 6, 7 which make the version 5 obsolete. Candidates have not choice but to recertified because their certificates is no longer relevant in the market.
I will try to discourage my friends from taking this certification because of the way VMware operates. To dragonic and lack of integrity. Candidates do not mind if they are being made known to it beforehand and not changing the rules as it goes along. It seems very unfair to those who have been certified before the announcement.