Gartner Magic Quadrant

What Does Gartner Magic Quadrant Mean?

The Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) is a series of market research publications produced by Gartner Inc. These reports use an evaluation matrix to analyze the positioning of technology-based companies, rate technology vendors based on a defined criteria and display vendor strengths and weaknesses. The Gartner MQ is used to evaluate a vendor before a specific technology product, service or solution is purchased.

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Techopedia Explains Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Garner Magic Quadrant evaluates each vendor based on vision completeness and execution ability. It further classifies each vendor into four different quadrants:

  • Leaders: Ranked at the top of the matrix and score higher on both criteria. Generally, these vendors are established businesses with large customer bases and strong market positions.
  • Challengers: Close to or on par with leaders. These vendors tend to lack vision but have the potential to transform into leaders if future plans are improved.
  • Visionaries: Usually smaller companies with reasonable visions. However, these vendors lack the ability to execute such visions.
  • Niche players: Typically startups or newer companies lacking both vision and execution.
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Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…