Transform you IT department with open source ITSM

Small, local government IT departments are often undocumented repositories of knowledge. Understaffed departments rarely have time to focus on maintaining good documentation about inventory, supplier lists, contracts, etc. Not focusing on this overlooked issue can lead to a poorly managed department. Creating a folder full of excel spreadsheets or trying to setup and maintain an up to date wiki page, quickly becomes frustrating to everyone involved. The good news is that Information Technology service management software or ITSM exists to solve this problem. This certainly sounds fancy and expensive, which is usually a non starter for small IT shops. As it turns out, that’s not the case. I came across GLPI an open source solution that fills this role nicely.

I was able to quickly install this in my laptop lab following instructions online. It was apparent this was truly the toolbox made for solving any lack of documentation. The second thing that is apparent is this is something that takes some planning and time to implement fully. The good news is the software is laid out in areas which makes it easy to focus on one area at a time. Hardware inventory a problem? Work in the computers section. Tracking and maintaining phone service an issue? Start in the Phones and Lines section. No ticketing system? There’s one in GLPI to implement. I’ll be writing about each section in the future. If you can’t wait just in and download this software and try it out. Do you have a different ITSM software or solution to this problem? Leave a comment below and tell me about it.