Dell and EMC closed their merger this morning, trumpeting themselves as an industry-changing force.

They have a point. The key, of course, is being a private company. Dell, which went private in 2013, announced quarterly earnings yesterday, noting it lost $264 million for the quarter ended July 29 — and if Wall Street doesn't like that, too bad.

"We don't have to cater to short-term thinking that exists in the market. We can think in decades," said Michael Dell in a press conference this morning.

The merger, announced roughly one year ago, creates the largest IT infrastructure company in the world and has raised questions about Dell's rivals. Specifically, it's helped inspire the current batch of rumors around rival Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE). Depending on whom you talk to, that company could be on the verge of selling off its software business or going private entirely.

"If you think about the other companies out there, they are, in one form or another, reacting to what we have done," said Michael Dell. "Let's just say: Other strategies that others may be considering, I think are going to be quite challenging."

Executives outlined the structure of the new company, revealing no surprises. The whole shebang is called Dell Technologies, but PCs and servers will continue to be sold under the name of plain old Dell.

The former EMC, now known as Dell's infrastructure business, will go under the name Dell EMC.

And companies such as Pivotal, RSA, and Boomi — members of the EMC Federation or companies being nurtured by Dell — "will continue to keep their independence," Michael Dell said. He added that Dell intends to continue developing similar startups within its own ranks.

In fact, Dell executives pointed out that their product portfolio includes newer, cloud-based technologies that could indeed disrupt Dell's own markets in servers and storage. Dell Technologies is poised for a future world of hybrid clouds and cloud-native applications, executives said.

VMware, considered a key prize in the deal, will retain its independence as well and will continue to trade as a public company. VMware shares were up 0.6 percent at $73.85 this morning. The VMware tracking stock, created as a condition of the merger, began trading today under the symbol DVMT and was up 6 percent at $48.10 at press time.

Revenues for the combined company are around $74 billion per year, Michael Dell said.

That's about what you'd expect. EMC reported just less than $25 billion in 2015 revenues and is on track for a slightly lower number this year. Dell, which has continued reporting earnings despite being private, reported revenues of $13.1 billion for the quarter ended July 29.

Dell is losing money, as noted above, but Michael Dell said that its cash flow is three times its pro forma debt payments. In fact, he claimed that Dell's debt service is smaller than what competitors pay out in share buybacks and dividends.

The companies now employ 140,000 across 180 countries, and its annual R&D budget is $4.5 billion.