5 Most Recommended Open-source IT-asset IT-Inventory Management Solutions
What is IT-asset management
IT asset management software is designed to help IT managers and IT departments to manage their assets which include hardware, processes, documentation, and resources. It is a combination of inventory management, accounting and process management.
IT assets are increasing everyday for today's organizations. IT departments are required to work smoothly with efficient resources and process management to keep everything in track for all other departments.
It usually features inventory management, items tracking, accounting features, items tracking, and some of IT-asset management feature projects, policy, vendor, acquisition and disposal management.
The efficient usage of IT assets with the organization requires control of assets life-cycle, assets visibility, ensure compliance with the requirements and increase utilization of the assets which at the end will reduce the cost.
Free/ Open-source and Commercial
Some of the open-source IT asset management solutions are an enterprise-grade system built to compete with commercial solutions. However, open-source solutions come with the cost of involving the team within software maintenance and management which is a good cost, not a bad one.
Open-source software will do more than saving the company tons of money on paid solutions, It'll allow the corporation to have better control over their solution with no fear of data lock-down.
On-premises and cloud-based setup
Almost all open-source solutions can work on-premises and self-hosted programs for corporations, organizations, and companies.
IT asset management for healthcare
Hospitals, clinics, laboratories have active and dynamic IT operations that work on all departments to ensure the medical and management teams have what they need. IT departments are required to manage assets, hardware, operations, installs, configuration, maintenance operations on a daily basis. With IT asset management solution they can perform more efficiently and keep track of all of their processes and assets.
Accounting/ Investing and Asset management solutions
IT- asset management solution helps investors to understand the IT-cost for assets and operations, so they can accurately analyze the organization's financial position.
In this list, we compiled the most usable and features-rich open-source solution that will benefit small, medium and large corporations, companies, organizations with the main goal to provide them with different enterprise-grade options to choose from.
We took into consideration the software we listed here are in active development and supported by a community of developers and users.
Open-source IT-asset IT-Inventory Management Solutions
1- i-doit
i-doit is our top pick despite the main description might be confusing: "
Open Source Configuration and Management Database". It manages software, configuration, policies, hardware assets, inventory, network documentation, keeps a record for all IPs and their status and documentation.
i-doit supports multi-users with different rules with a simple yet powerful easy-to-use interface. It provides partial file import and export options for the open-source version which can be extended with the commercial one.
There are 2 versions of the open-source version and a professional commercial version that has more support, with extended add-ons, reports and notification features.
Some may consider i-doit is not a complete open-source solution, however, the open-source version has all the commonly required features for almost all IT departments for small and medium-sized companies.
We have listed i-doit on top of this list because it focuses on documentation and policy management.
Features
- Inventory and asset management
- License management
- Networks management
- Network devices management
- Network documentation management
- Configuration management
- IP address management for all network devices
2- SNIPE-IT Asset Management
SNIPE-IT is a unique solution for asset management and a completely open-source (GPLv3) project. It focuses on asset management and tracking and license administration. Unlike i-doit SNIPE-IT offers notification out-of-box with complete log and history management.
SNIPE-IT is a developer-friendly system that makes it an ideal solution for the IT department that requires custom extensions or integration to existing systems.
Features
- Rich dashboard
- Network devices manager
- Multi-user support
- Developer-friendly with REST-API support
- Email notification
- QR-code support for asset Tracking
- Powerful search
- User management
- Email alerts for expiring warranties and licenses
We highly recommend SNIPE-IT for small and medium-sized or large companies.
3- GLPI
GLPI is free software for managing IT back-office assets and resources. It features comprehensive software management including license management and support contacts. It has a built-in service desk and rich software auditing options.
GLPI is easy to install and use, it's the perfect solution for organizing a small IT back-office without the need for extra software. It supports multiple platforms like Windows, Linux with iOS and Android clients.
Features
- Rich Simple UI/ UX
- Built-in service desk
- Financial management
- FAQs manager
- Statistics and reporting
- Decision-making support system
- Saved search
- Project management tools
- Automated operations for inventory
- Community supported
- Multiple deployment options (Supports Amazon AWS)
4- Fusion Inventory
Fusion Inventory is a cross-platform IT asset/ inventory manager solution. It's built to manage computers, network devices, printers. It has also unique features as it manages virtual machines and virtual machine images as well as android devices.
Fusion Inventory supports managing software deployment and deployment scripts administration.
This solution comes with the support of desktop client (agent) that works seamlessly on Windows systems which supports performing many management tasks as well.
Features
- Hardware archiving information management
- Virtual Machine management
- Supports many virtualization systems
- Network devices manager
- Asset management
- Multi-user support
David Durieux
5- Ralph
Ralph is a free open-source IT back-office asset manager for data-centers or small companies with active data-centers. It's also a lightweight solution that works best for small companies.
It features multiple dashboard support, clean user-interface, multiple user support, and data-center management.
Features
- Hardware inventory manager
- Back-office manager
- Support center
- Reports and statistics
- License management
- Networks management
- Multi-user support
Conclusion
We have listed general-purpose IT asset management solutions aiming to provide open-source alternatives for commercial solutions. We hope to help IT-managers to optimize their workflow. We value any addition to this list to enrich the open-source software community.
