Michael Dell just took a veiled shot at Meg Whitman

EMC is holding its huge annual customer conference in Las Vegas this week and it's soon-to-be new owner, Michael Dell, appeared during the opening keynote on Monday to talk to the crowd.

His big news: the name for the new merged company: Dell Technologies.

He said the word "technologies" indicates that the company will be "a family of businesses. ... As far as family names go, I'm kind of attached to Dell," he told the crowd, reports ZDNet's Stephanie Condon. 

But he also took a moment to throw a little shade at competitor Hewlett Packard Enterprise by mentioning that other companies are  "shrinking their way to success," Condon reports, whereas Dell and EMC are doing the reverse.

That's a reference to remarks made by  Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman.

From the very first day that that Dell announced its plans to acquire EMC in a $67 billion deal known as the largest tech acquisition ever, HPE's Whitman has been talking it down.

On that first day, she sent a note to her employees noting that Dell will be stuck with a massive amount of debt on its balance sheet.

More recently, she's been pointing out that Dell/EMC's strategy is the exact opposite of what Hewlett-Packard did when it cleaved itself in two. "They're getting bigger, leveraging up, and doubling down mostly on legacy technology. While our strategy is to get smaller," she said.

The crowd in Las Vegas on Monday knew exactly who Dell was referring to.