Well, that was quick, sort of.

Just a day after Dell Technologies Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell implied that Chinese authorities still hadn’t blessed the computer maker’s $67 billion acquisition of storage giant EMC Corp., Dell announced that the deal will close after all on Sept. 7.

That said, China had held up the deal for months over apparent concerns about competition with Chinese technology companies and local component vendors. But today Dell said China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) granted clearance for the combination.

“This is an historic moment for both Dell and EMC,” Dell (pictured) said in a statement. “Combined, we will be exceptionally well-positioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation IT including digital transformation, software-defined data center, converged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, mobile and security.”

The combination of the Round Rock, TX-based maker of personal computers and servers and the data storage systems and software maker EMC will be the largest tech merger ever. It also would create the largest seller of information technology equipment and software. The combined company will employ more than 140,000 people.

Dell said during a press conference at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas yesterday that he envisions the acquisition creating a force that will make the use of IT more business-friendly. That’s especially important as every electronic device gets connected to networks. “The net of this from an industry perspective is a fairly substantial expansion of the available opportunities if you’re nimble enough to adjust,” he said. “We’re really just at the beginning of this.”

The issue of how nimble such a giant can be will loom large in coming months and years as the companies tackle a massive integration challenge. Dell emphasized in comments yesterday at the conference that it can provide both scale and nimbleness — the latter by letting subsidiaries such as VMware, Pivotal Software and RSA Security continue to operate independently.

But the history of technology suggests it won’t be easy for Dell to compete with a continuing onslaught of upstarts in an enterprise technology market reenergized in recent years by cloud computing and open-source software. David Vellante, chief research officer at market researcher Wikibon and co-chief executive of SiliconANGLE Media, publisher of SiliconANGLE, has said the deal “marks a new era in IT,” as the hardware side of the business has been winnowed down to a very few giants.

EMC shareholders will get $24.05 a share in cash as well as a newly issued tracking stock linked to a portion of EMC’s 80 percent ownership of the publicly held VMware Inc. EMC shareholders are expected to get about 0.111 shares of new tracking stock for each EMC share. Although Dell remains privately held, the tracking stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange using the ticker symbol DVMT.

Dell offered more on what the future holds for his company in an interview yesterday on theCUBE, owned by the same company as SiliconANGLE:

Disclosure: TheCUBE is the paid media partner for VMworld. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over coverage.

Photo by theCUBE