While at the EMC annual user conference (EMC World 2009) this week, Chad Sakac, vice president of the VMware Technology Alliance at EMC, told IT PRO magazine that the company reaffirms the promise it made to keep VMware as an independent company.  Sakac told IT PRO:

"We are determined to leave them independent. Both EMC customers and non-EMC customers have thanked us. We want everyone to have access to the technology but come to EMC on merit."

Which sounds great, but then he also added later in the same conversation:

"No-one knows what is around the corner but it would be short sited of us to do it as this point. There are no plans [to remove its independence] in the works now and no plans to do so in the future."

Indeed.  Doesn't sound quite as strong a belief here.  But, we'll see.  If it ends up making financial sense to the parent company, who could blame them?  They do after all have fiduciary responsibility to EMC shareholders.  Check out the entire article from IT PRO to see what he thinks about the VMware competition.