Gartner Inc. has named the Sahana Software Foundation a Cool Vendor in Risk Management and Compliance for 2010 for its Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) approach to disaster management.

Gartner’s report, published in April 2010, is focused on the increasing and diverse risk management and compliance challenges facing organizations, which they see as requiring specialized options to supplement enterprise risk management and compliance applications. They note: “In this Cool Vendors report, we highlight three vendors that offer solutions that are certainly relevant to risk management and compliance, but might not immediately spring to mind when you think of GRC [Governance, Risk Management, Compliance] solutions. The variations in the GRC problems that these vendors are helping to solve demonstrate how important it is to understand the context of the problem.”

Calling Sahana “a unique offering for managing responses to humanitarian crises”, Gartner “chose Sahana as a 2010 Cool Vendor because the Sahana software is the only FOSS application in the broader disaster management market that is developed and maintained by an all-volunteer force since its inception. This is crucial, because each new disaster deployment brings with it new requirements and the need for new sources of programming support.”

The note recommends Sahana software for Government emergency and disaster relief managers, humanitarian aid organizations, business continuity management professionals and academic institutions.

Copies of the Research Note are available from Gartner.