Dell is increasing the ranks of its newly created Premier Plus partner class by more than 60 percent to show partners that doubling down with the Round Rock, Texas, company will open up opportunities that will allow partners to realize accelerated end-to-end growth, especially once the acquisition of enterprise powerhouse EMC is complete.

Dell launched the Premier Plus designation for partners Feb. 1 with 50 solution providers the vendor describes as the "elite of the elite." Soon, those 50 will be joined by another 30. The new tier is aimed at partners that show loyalty to Dell, and it's intended to push partners to win new business in specific business units across PCs, servers, storage, networking and cloud.

The program allows partners to either specialize in certain business units, or to sell across the Dell portfolio.

Here are 10 things partners need to know about climbing to the "Premier Plus" tier.

10. Organized By Business Unit

Revenue targets are arranged by business group, including the Enterprise Solutions group, client group, information management and security.

9. Enterprise Solutions

Partners selling Dell's Enterprise Solutions Group must achieve server, storage and networking competencies and hit an annual revenue target of $5 million in the U.S. and $4 million in Canada.

8. Client Group

Partners selling client solutions [Dell's term for PCs] must achieve workstation and core client competencies, and are also encouraged to take on the cloud client computing competency. Minimum revenue targets are $7 million in both the U.S. and Canada.

7. Systems And Information Management

Partners that want to get to Premier Plus in systems and information management must achieve three competencies, and take on at least two. They include data protection, endpoint management and Windows management. The revenue target for the group is $500,000 in the U.S. and Canada.

6. Security

Security partners can work toward Premier Plus status by bringing in minimum annual revenue of $500,000 and achieving Dell's network security competency.

5. Big-Time Benefits

Partners in the Premier Plus program are eligible for enhanced payouts and benefits above Premier Partner, including several rebates and incentives.

4. Growth Accelerator

Dell is encouraging partners to concentrate on growth by using a series of base rebates, growth accelerators and line-of-business multipliers: Those base rebates can go as high as 5 percent for high-end enterprise solutions including storage, networking, and high end servers, and as much as 4 to 8 percent more on growth from previous periods with Dell.

3. New Business Incentives

New business incentives include aggressive rewards for finding and driving new customers to Dell. New business incentives for storage and networking are currently at 15 percent and servers are at 8 percent. 

2. Support Services

In services, there are rebates to incent Dell’s ProSupport suite of services and client peripherals and displays through the channel, with as much as 1 percent more in rebates when services are attached. 

1. Combining Incentives

There are additional benefits, including funding for on-site vendor reps, "choose your own device" kits and training opportunities. Dell says partners that combine these incentives can earn as much as 25 percent in rebates in storage, networking and other lines of business.