It has been a remarkably busy December, with my client inquiries dominated by colocation calls, and it looks like the last bit of the year’s inquiries will be rounded out with last-minute year-end deals for CDN services. I’ve published what I’m going to publish this year, so I’m focusing on my first-quarter 2009 agenda, and all the preparations that go into the Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting.

We’re looking at probably double the number of providers this year than we had last year, with the high likelihood that there’s nobody at the new providers who have gone through an MQ process in some previous life. That means a certain amount of handholding, as well as an aggressive spin-up to learn providers that we don’t know well yet — providers who are entering the enterprise space but don’t necessarily have many enterprise clients yet.

I’m going to devote a certain amount of blog space over the next couple of weeks to talking about what it’s like to do an MQ, because I imagine it’s something that both IT buyers and vendors are occasionally curious about. Keep in mind that this will be personal narrative, though; what’s true for me is not necessarily true for other analysts, including my usual partner-in-crime for this particular MQ.

The quick tips for vendors:

1. Know who Gartner is advising and therefore, what our clients care about (and thus, the products and services of yours that matter to them).

2. Be able to concisely and concretely articulate what makes you different from your competitors.

3. Have a vision of the market and be able to explain how that ties into the way that you run your company and how it ties into your product plans for its future.

4. Make sure your customer references still like you.