To no one’s surprise, shareholders of EMC Corp. today approved Dell Inc.’s $60 billion acquisition offer for the computer storage company.

The purchase by Dell, which makes personal computers and servers, with EMC, which also owns computer virtualization software company VMware Inc., would create the largest seller of information technology equipment and software. In particular, the combined company would be able to offer the “converged infrastructure” of computing, storage and networking that customers increasingly are demanding.

The only remaining obstacle is regulatory approval in China. It’s not clear when that will happen, though the deal isn’t expected to close until October.

It will be financed through stock, cash and close to $50 billion in debt. Denali Holding Inc., the parent company of Dell, will pay EMC shareholders $24.05 a share and 0.111 shares of a tracking stock tied to VMware’s stock price. EMC shareholders will get a VMware tracking stock, so Dell will provide quarterly earnings reports even though it’s privately held.

Some 98 percent of the votes, representing 74 percent of EMC’s shares, voted in favor of the deal. EMC Chief Executive Joe Tucci (pictured), who will depart after the merger, said during the brief shareholder meeting that the combined companies would be a “powerhouse.”

Both Dell and EMC face a similar challenge even as their combination might create greater economies of scale. Large corporations are cutting back on their purchases of traditional hardware and software in favor of cloud computing and freely available open-source software to run broader swaths of their businesses.

But large enterprises generally aren’t willing to make fast changes in their IT systems for fear of causing disruptions in their business. Many continue to buy both traditional IT gear and software while they move some computing workloads to the cloud or to hybrid setups using their own data centers and private clouds as well as public clouds such as Amazon Web Services.

As a result, Dell’s and EMC’s core products, while declining, haven’t fallen off a cliff. Indeed, the vote comes a day after EMC reported somewhat better-than-expected earnings. It reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of 45 cents a share, 3 cents higher than analysts on average had expected, on revenues of $6 billion.

The faster-growing VMware, which Dell Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell has called the “crown jewel” of the EMC deal, fared even better in its second quarter. It reported a profit before certain expenses of 97 cents a share, somewhat higher than the 95 cents analysts had expected on average, and revenues rose 11 percent from a year ago, to $1.69 billion. VMware also raised its earnings guidance for the year.