Irreverence

posted on 16 June 2008 14:10

When Gartner came up with its magic quadrant idea you could hear and feel the tectonic plates of the analyst industry grinding and gnashing their teeth. An entire industry that survived and profited mightily on the basic 4-box diagram found itself trumpeted by Gartner's wondrous ace.

Supppliers trooped in high-paying droves to Gartner offices to equip Gartner analysts with the knowledge to place them in the leaders' or visionaries' quadrants as the boxes were now to be called.

Nobody else could use a simple 4-box diagram any more. It was like offering paste jewellery that couldn't even begin to attempt to compete with the lustrous pearl that was Gartner's magic quadrant.

Gradually the analyst industry regrouped. Forrester came up with its wave: "One of your biggest challenges is evaluating and selecting vendor products and services. That's why we created the Forrester Wave — our call on a particular market or technology. Whether you're investing in application server platforms or content management providers, the Forrester Wave makes it easy for you to make well-informed decisions. ... The new Forrester Wave offers:

- A detailed analysis of vendors' products and services based on transparent, fully accessible criteria.
- A powerful Excel spreadsheet that allows you to easily compare products and get in-depth data and analysis about each one.
- Tools to develop a custom shortlist based on your company's unique requirements."

Huh, 4 boxes? That's so yesterday. Forrester uses four concentric quarter circles. It's curvy; it's friendlier; it's new; it's different; it's better.

But we miss our old friend. Curves are all very well but they're hard to draw whereas four boxes; any half-trained consultant can draw four boxes on a flip chart. They're simple, efficient and powerful.

Now Radicati has bitten the bullet. Four-box diagrams are what we need. Four boxes are what we want. Four boxes, sorry, quadrants, are what we'll have. The Radicati Market Quadrants rank vendors in a market based on a four quadrant system, which includes "Mature Players," "Specialists," "Trail Blazers," and "Top Players" quadrants.

Who said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

Market quadrants versus magic quadrants? Who cares. It's a standard 4-box diagram and we can all get back to normal again.

So B&F has invented its own quadrant diagram. We're calling it the Blocksandfiles Squares - BS for the acronymically-mided. The four sections are named clockwise from the bottom right: could-be winners; losers; maybe-contenders; and winners. Let's be open here. Storage suppliers are graded on the amount of money they ..... scratch that , SCRATCH that!!!! .... the applicability of their technology to solving customers' problems, their efficiency at bringing this to the market; the completeness of their....oh, you get the picture...

^{[Chris Mellor.]}