Now that the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting, 2010 has been published, we’re going to be getting started on the mid-year update almost immediately (in February). The mid-year version will be cloud-only, specifically the self-provisioned “virtual data center” segment of the market.

Since I have been deluged with questions about what it takes to be included (and there’s been some interesting fud on Quora), I thought I’d explain in public.

For many years now, Ted Chamberlin and I have done this Magic Quadrant using criteria that are very black-and-white; anyone should be able to look at them like a checklist. Those criteria are pretty simple:

• You are required to have certain services, which we try to define as clearly as possible.
• There’s a minimum revenue requirement.
• There’s a requirement to demonstrate global presence, either through data centers in particular geographies, or a certain amount of revenue derived from outside your home region.

If you meet those criteria, you’re in. If you don’t meet those criteria, no amount of begging will get you in. It has nothing to do with whether or not you are a client. It doesn’t even have anything to do with whether or not our clients ask about you, or whether we think you’re worthy; in inquiry, we routinely recommend some providers who don’t qualify for the MQ but who compete successfully against included vendors.

Because we routinely recommend vendors who aren’t on the MQ, and we’re obviously interested in the market as a whole, we welcome briefings from all vendors who believe that they serve Gartner’s end-user client base (mid-sized businesses to large enterprises, technology companies and tech-heavy businesses of all sizes), regardless of whether they qualify for inclusion. We also track the lower end of the market, though, so we do look at the vendors who serve small businesses; vendors in this segment are similarly welcome to brief us, though in that space we’re generally primarily interested in market-share leaders and anyone doing something that’s clearly differentiated.

Analysts at Gartner choose what briefings they want to take, regardless of whether or not a vendor is a client (our system for briefing requests doesn’t even tell analysts the vendor’s client status). You are welcome to brief us as frequently as you have something interesting to say.