With the fiscal year now securely behind us, I wanted to take a look back and reflect on our past achievements and recent growth within the channel. 

Dell’s fourth quarter (November-January) included events such as Dell World where we announced new improvements to the PartnerDirect program, adding $125 million in enhanced incentives and programs, including the Dell Storage Accelerator, Windows Server 2003 Migration, and Growth Accelerators for the Client Solutions and Enterprise Solutions Groups that are all launching this year. This news garnered a lot interest, including several stories in CRN and Computer Dealer News. Both the channel news and the global enterprise announcements resulted in over 718 pieces of coverage.

We also hosted the PartnerDirect Summit at Dell World and had a great turnout with hundreds of partners from around the world. This event gave our channel partners a chance to hear from our top leadership on the strategic importance of channel partners and how to grow their business.  To show how much we appreciate all the hard work our partners have done throughout the year, we hosted a fun Partner Appreciation cocktail reception, as a way to say thank you and for partners to meet and network with each other.

I am happy to report that channel represents over 40 percent of Dell’s global revenue, making us one of the top vendors with a channel business at this magnitude. The engagement from our 4,300+ certified partners around the world has been incredible with the number of competencies being completed by partners globally increasing 25 percent over last year with the strongest growth areas in Data Protection, Client Management, Networking, Network Security and Storage.

The channel press has recognized all of our hard work and dedicated a series of 12 stories on how awesome the Dell Channel business is. In one story, CRN reports, “A year after winning its $24.9 billion hard-fought battle to go private, Dell now sees its PartnerDirect channel community as instrumental to its success. In fact, Dell reported its channel business is growing faster than the direct side of the house. That's a trend partners said has directly benefited them.” While we are thrilled with our progress, we are aware and focused on how we can raise the bar on partner experience and programs that help them grow and thrive with Dell.

We have already kicked off the first quarter of the new fiscal year with a bang. In February, I made an announcement on new partner incentives in North America. These include additional discounts on key Dell Solutions to 45,000 U.S. registered channel partners as well as $40,000 in marketing development funds to Premier Partners to stay ahead and stand out from the crowd within the channel marketplace.  In addition, U.S. partner reps will also be eligible to receive a $250 new account bonus on all hardware and software products sold through the channel.

As we look ahead in 2015, we see great opportunities for partners including adding new tools to your tool box:

• Offering Windows Server 2003 Migration tools to customers before the July deadline
• New data center upgrades within servers, networking and storage
• Updates to data protection and network security to ensure your customer’s data is protected against cyber threats

Thank you again to the Dell channel team and our channel partners for all your hard work and we look forward to continue thriving with you this year. As always, we love to hear from you, so please comment below on the program updates and incentives you are most looking forward to utilizing or just share your opinion on the PartnerDirect program. I also encourage you to engage with me on Twitter via @CookCherylS.