Dell was for long one of Intel's best partners and there was quite a ruckus when it announced its first servers using AMD processors. Dell's market shares have been diminishing steadily and if the trend continues it will drop to third place, after rival Acer moved up the list. Dell has made some rather substantial changes to its way of work over the last years and now the next surprise comes.
Dell will launch a server called XS11-VX8 using VIA's Nano processor platform. The same energy efficient processor used i netbooks. Putting a processor with netbook performance in a server can always be questioned, but of course Dell has a plan.

Dell XS11-VX8 (Picture courtesy of WFD)
They hope to reduce the power consumption of easy individual server down to between 15-30W and with a tenth of the power usage of a regular server XS11-VX8 will be perfect for companies that needs many servers for smaller workloads.
"As the server’s bland name indicates, the product is not meant for mass consumption. Rather, it’s a specialized system aimed at companies that buy hundreds and even thousands of servers to host Web sites."
The servers can only be ordered from a special division at Dell and cost around $400.

Dell's new server system will launch in a a 3.5" case and each 2U system can hold no less than 12 individual servers, which will also save space.