It seems like just yesterday that I posted my "back to school" blog, but ready or not, it's June and school's officially out for summer. Our channel partner program has made some amazing strides since September, and with all these educational themes in my mind, I can't help but share how proud I am of our partners who have taken advantage of Dell training to grow their businesses. We will continue to align our training program to partners’ sales, business and technical requirements to ensure they get the highest level of Dell support and take advantage of discounts, deal registration and incentive programs.

Through our comprehensive training and enablement programs that now include more than 300 unique offerings, completed courses grew to 52K globally in Q1FY16, up 26 percent from Q1FY15. We're proud of our overachievers who take multiple courses, and I'm excited to see that the number of unique students completing courses grew by 28 percent.

Additionally, completion of Dell Competencies -- which enable partners to become certified in specific practice areas -- increased 14 percent year over year in North America, with more than 1,500 partners globally completing the Network Security Competency alone. This momentum is continuing throughout the year. In Q1 in North America, we launched new Advanced Competencies in Storage, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Core Client Solutions and Workstations, and we expanded the Desktop Virtualization Competency. All of these offer plenty of opportunities for our partners to stay a step ahead of the competition by expanding their knowledge base which pays off – By leveraging all these training opportunities, Dell's top 100 North American partners by training investment grew revenue by more than 40 percent year over year. That's some honors program!

Sticking with the school theme, another factor that comes to mind is "enrollment." Since our Windows Server Migration Campaign started in Q4, 3,000+ partners have enrolled as they realize the business growth opportunities with the end of life of Windows Server 2003.

Also, after Dell announced our improved incentives in Q1, partner participation in the program has been overwhelming. So far, partners have closed deals with more than 3,200 accounts based on new Greenfield discounts on Client, Storage, Server and Networking. By leveraging the Rebate Accelerators program, 300 partners have earned discounts based on storage sales above last year's sales of Dell Storage, Server, Networking and Client. Stay tuned for more on the incentives front as we continue to expand the program throughout the year with more front-end/back-end program credits, partner rep bounty and integration of Dell Software tied to driving new business. Plus we’ll be rewarding partners for retention and reactivation.

Our new fiscal year has started off with a bang and I couldn't be prouder of our channel team and our partners for their continued commitment. Now that school is out, I hope we can all take some time with our families to enjoy the summer. We still have a lot of work to do to make this the best year yet for Dell's partner program, and I'm confident we're on the right track. We always enjoy hearing directly from our partner community, so please comment below on training courses and incentives you find most useful or ideas for new opportunities. I also encourage you to engage with me on Twitter via @CookCherylS.