Dell Technologies Inc.’s landmark acquisition of EMC Corp. is on track to close by October, founder and CEO Michael Dell said in an interview today. But that means that, contrary to both published reports and widespread expectations that it would close this week, it’s not a done deal yet.

In an interview today on theCUBE, the video unit of SiliconANGLE Media, at the VMworld conference opening today in Las Vegas, what Dell didn’t say spoke more loudly than what he did say: The deal still hasn’t closed apparently because China hasn’t yet officially provided its blessing.

“We announced this in October of last year and we’re right on track with the timing,” he told theCUBE *. “We’re moving along and making progress.”

But what about China? All Dell would say is, “We’re continuing to work with them.” He added that he has “met a number of the distinguished folks in China, whether it be one-on-one meetings or group meetings.” He said China remains a key market where Dell has about a $5.5 billion business in China, plus deep supply chain relationships.

A source close to Dell has provided hints that China has in fact approved the deal, if not officially, so it’s a matter of when rather than if. The fact that Dell officially changed its name to Dell Technologies Friday indicates little concern the deal would be delayed beyond October. But it’s apparent that Chinese authorities had concerns about competition for Chinese companies such as Huawei and Lenovo. David Vellante, chief research officer at market researcher Wikibon and co-chief executive of SiliconANGLE Media, said China probably demanded concessions on organizational structure in China and support by Dell for local Chinese suppliers.

The combination of the Round Rock, TX-based maker of personal computers and servers and data storage systems and software maker EMC — the largest tech merger ever — would create the largest seller of IT equipment and software. In particular, the combined company would be able to offer “converged infrastructure” that combines computing, storage and networking.

VMworld sponsor VMware Inc. emphasized in the opening keynote presentation its own importance in bringing together all those technologies in the emerging world of cloud computing. VMware announced Cloud Foundation, which packages software for storage, networking and virtualization and allows it to be used as a service in IBM’s cloud. It also provided a preview of Cross-Cloud Services that will let companies manage applications across clouds including those from IBM Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

During the keynote, Dell said VMware will be critical to Dell’s goal of making it easy to create private clouds that will mesh with their fast-growing use of public clouds such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and others.

“We’re at the beginning of a whole other wave of excitement and innovation in our industry,” he said. In particular, he added on theCUBE, VMware will help provide software-defined technologies along with its ecosystem of partners that are demonstrating their wares at the show. “If you look on the floor you see software-defined everything,” he said.

With the embrace of VMware, which Dell has called the “jewel” of the EMC deal, the CEO sought to quash speculation that with Dell’s enormous debt load for the deal, it might consider selling VMware.

“That’s totally wrong,” he said, adding that VMware will remain independent. “Anybody who says that has no idea what they’re talking about.”

Indeed, he insisted VMware is central to his strategy. “VMware is making a very nice transition into this emerging cloud world,” he said. “It’s doing that by taking virtualization and software-defined technologies beyond the hypervisor into the software-defined data center.”

Dell also said debt not a big issue, and won’t prevent the company from continuing to invest, including its $4.5 billion spent annually on research and development.

Overall, Dell said his company can offer the scale of established companies such as Dell, EMC and VMware combined with the speed and agility of EMC-federated companies such as Pivotal Software Inc. and Dell’s newly public SecureWorks Inc. subsidiary.

Asked if he worries that with the rapid rise of new technologies such as the Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles that Dell could be missing out, he conceded that it’s a constant concern. But nothing that Dell has “hundreds of IoT projects going,” he added that “we have big ears. We want to take that understanding and make the magic happen in the middle.”

Here’s the full interview with Dell:

* Disclosure: TheCUBE is the paid media partner for VMworld. VMware, Dell and other sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by Robert Hof