Some companies love certs, some could care less. Your best bet is to get certs that match your skills. For example, if you are a exchange guru, get an exchange cert. It's the best route for two reasons. One, it's easy to get certified w/ products you know. Two, you can actually answer the questions people are going to ask you because you have said cert on your resume. If you are interested in something, like exchange, don't get the cert to "learn about it." and have it on your resume. Even M$ tell you not to do this :D Your supposed to learn about it, get solid w/ it, then get the cert. Anyway, the only truly respected cert I can think of is the CCIE. People who have a CCIE tend to be fairly solid. Obviously this is due to the testing process. As for the rest of them, to many people cheat which destroys the value of it.
That being said back to the companies that love certs. They are typically going for a partner level tier. For example to be a gold level M$ partner you need a certain number of employees w/ X number of certs. In that case if you have a huge boat of certs you will be valuable to the company. Also in some cases, like Citrix, you need to have a certified employee to get support, or other various things, so it maybe an absolute requirement.
