Updated The Dell Corporation, perhaps the staunchest of Intel's customers, is producing large file servers using the Alpha chip, it has emerged. Terry Shannon, editor of Shannon knows Compaq broke the information this week. A company called Net Appliance is selling the boxes as servers for thin clients. According to Shannon, the company has been buying several thousand Alphas from Dell. Details of the machines are available at the company's Web site. Steve Jackson, European business manager of servers at Dell, said: "The agreement we've signed with Network Appliances is to bring to market a filer rather than a file server." He explained that a filer is a network attached storage system. "This market is expected to grow significantly," said. The choice of an Alpha processor had no signifance, he claimed. "For a standard platform, Intel is absolutely there. Our standard software is Windows NT." ®