Quadrillion quadrants

Even Gartner themselves realise their presentations can sometimes be seen as "same-old, same-old".

A colleague and I have a running joke about Gartner's magic quadrant. We're constantly amazed at the royal status ascribed to it by the vendor community.

A place in the magic quadrant is sometimes one of the first claims to credibility vendors will make when spruiking a product, as if it is the definitive source of quality.

Maybe I'm biased, but I much prefer our reviews channel to a dot on a chart.

However, it's good to see Gartner themselves joking at how many quadrants and charts they're flooding the industry with.

Analyst Mark McDonald made this quip at Gartner's Symposium in Sydney this week after he projected yet another quadrant onto the big screen:

"I'd like to point out that this is my mandatory four quadrant slide, that is required of every Gartner presentation."

If you're at the Symposium this week, we hope you don't go square-eyed.