When you look at the world and see that the number of people online will double from 1 to 2 billion in a few years, it makes a compelling case for understanding where this growth is coming from and how well your company is positioned to take advantage of it. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, in 2007, emerging economies like China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, and others accounted for nearly 30% of global GDP and almost 50% of global GDP growth. Today this trend is only accelerating. At Dell, Emerging Countries is one of our Big 5 strategic priorities and we are reexamining everything we do there. One thing is becoming clear, to be successful in this space you must enable the success of your channel partners, who in most cases have the established infrastructure and brand to reach these customers.
This week, we announced that our PartnerDirect program, which we launched in the U.S. in December, is now available in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Despite our roots as a "Direct" company, Dell has more than 30,000 global partners around the world who generated approximately $9 billion in Dell run-rate revenue in the past year alone. With the expansion of PartnerDirect in EMEA, we thought it would it would be a good opportunity to further discuss Dell's global commercial channel strategy, how it supports several of Dell's business priorities, and the impact the channel will have on Dell's growth strategy-including emerging countries.
As a quick recap, PartnerDirect was launched in the U.S. in December. It comes as the result of feedback from thousands of solution providers and VARs who told us how exactly they wanted Dell to help them. Dell listened and developed a new set of tools and services exclusively designed to make it easier for our channel partners to work with Dell and be more successful. For starters, the program creates a new web portal dedicated to our partners--www.dell.com/partner. And for the first time, Dell is providing a partner logo for certain types of joint marketing activities. PartnerDirect also provides 100-percent dedicated sales and customer care and opens new vehicles for credit financing.
Also PartnerDirect provides a clear mechanism for Deal registration. Dell is committed to minimizing channel conflict. Speaking to CRN last week, Michael put it best when he said, "Let's say you're a Dell/EqualLogic partner, and you recognize an opportunity inside your customer, and you register that opportunity-so far, roughly 90 percent of the opportunities that have been requested to be registered have been accepted-so you register this opportunity. Our sales reps are compensated the same whether it's sold through a channel partner or it's sold direct. So they have no incentive not to work with the channel, and in fact every incentive to work with the channel."
To get some more insight into how PartnerDirect is being implemented, I recently sat down with Greg Davis, Dell's Vice President & General Manager of the Americas Channel Group; Josh Claman, Vice President & General Manager of Dell Channels in EMEA; and Pim Dale, Vice President & General Manager of Emerging Markets in EMEA. In the vlog, this team describes Dell's existing partnerships in emerging countries, the size and scoping of channel activities in EMEA, and Dell's current penetration rate through the channel and what it hopes to achieve over the next few years.