Gartner Magic Quadrant's: Any use to anybody on their own?

The post summer phase of the year often brings new challenges, and this year is certainly no different as we gear up to start really building new capabilities in the business.  Part of that process has meant that I have had the opportunity to attend many a vendor briefing, and what has struck me is how the "Gartner Magic Quadrant's" get interpreted and used in presentations.

In 9 out of 10 times, a single view of the latest Magic Quadrant is trotted out to justify a marketing statement.  If I had a penny for each time that a vendor claimed that they were now the market leader and used a MQ graphic to justify the claim ...... I should long ago be sitting very comfortably on a beach in the Bahamas with a tall cool drink in hand.

Practitioner's that are tracking the market generally will examine fairly large volumes of data in order to be able to spot a trend and draw any sort of meaningful conclusion.  MQ's are not comprehensive data sets, and are simply one set of data points, they simply do not tell the whole story.