The Magic Quadrant is a special case of what is called a multi-attribute decision model (MADM) that seeks to quantify qualitative things. The problem with the MQ that I have voiced to Gartner several times is that the criteria they use are HIDDEN and VAGUE. If you want people to be able to improve, you need to provide more information about how you are rating them and why. Gartner does not do this, and they argues they are being scientific. This is why I prefer Forrester's Wave and Datamonitor's Decision Matrix. At least they are explicit about their criteria so that you can see what things might need to change to get a different rating.
If you want a good example of how politically motivated the MQ is, look at Microsoft's rating in the leaders quadrant in their most recent MQ on enterprise content management for SharePoint. While SharePoint has it's place in an enterprise, it is poor at most functions that most people would call content management. BUT, it is broadly deployed and has the MS name behind it.
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