Not to pile – on but the news of a vendor suing Gartner based on the results of a Magic Quadrant (MQ) ranking caused us (and likely a lot of you) to think about just what the MQ means for the WAN application acceleration market. We also found ourselves discussing whether or not the MQ as it exists today is pertinent, viable, targeted, and effective for WAN application acceleration purchasers. A lot of heated discussion ensued. We found ourselves discovering shreds of doubt about the MQ and coming up with a few tweaks that we felt would make the MQ more requirements-based than the opinions-based version that it is today.
First the definitions – Gartner defines the WAN application acceleration market and vendors in this category as WAN Optimization Controller (WOC) vendors. According to Gartner the goal of any MQ is to “predict the viability of a product or solution to the global enterprise.” Gartner analysts measure vendors across two vectors: Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. According to Gartner:
