A new report from Gartner Dataquest shows Sun regaining the leadership in Unix-based servers and gaining revenue and market share in the overall market over the most recent quarter. Seems like old times, perhaps, but the report was nuanced enough to give most vendors in the market room for cautious optimism.

Linux-driven, X86-based servers remain the most dynamic segment of the market, the report states, with Dell continuing to do major damage to the other vendors in this space. Servers in this space remain the systems of choice for Web-driven growth, the report notes.

Sliced differently, the report also shows blade servers making large inroads, up 46 percent overall and 49 percent in Europe compared to the same period a year ago. IBM is the revenue leader here, at 28.7 percent, according to report, albeit followed closely by HP at 28.0. Dell remains a strong third.

Reading between these lines, one finds that IBM achieves this revenue leadership with a market share of only 15 percent of systems shipped, due to its success at the high end of the market. HP, by contrast, is the volume leader at around 27 percent. So blades are clearly emerging as a multi-tiered market, with apples to oranges comparisons emerging when looking at blades as a whole.

Sun's renewed Unix-based leadership, earning the company a 31.4 percent share, comes in a segment that is flat, due to continued weakening at the high end, a trend toward server consolidation, and the continued progress of those pesky lower-end Linux-based systems.

Yet Sun has reported that it had the highest growth among the top five vendors in the Linux-based space in terms of shipments and revenues. And Sun did emerge, according to the report, with an overall sales growth of 7.6 percent over a year ago, and now trails Dell by a scant 0.1 percentage point in the overall market.

Worldwide server shipments were up 13.7 percent in this period compared to a year ago, according to the report.