What is GLPI and how can it transform your IT operations?

GLPI stands for Gestionnaire Libre de Parc Informatique — French for "free IT equipment manager." It is an open-source platform that combines IT service management (ticketing, SLAs, change management) with IT asset management (hardware inventory, software licenses, contracts) in a single web application. It has been in active development since 2003 and is used by organizations in over 100 countries.

This article is a practical overview — what GLPI actually does, who it fits, what it replaces, when to pick something else, and what matters when you deploy it.

What GLPI actually does

The platform covers five core areas:

• Helpdesk and ticketing — users submit requests through a self-service portal or email. Technicians manage incidents, problems, and changes with full lifecycle tracking.
• Asset inventory — computers, monitors, printers, phones, network equipment, and software are catalogued with technical details, location, user assignment, and warranty status. GLPI Agent (formerly FusionInventory) auto-discovers and keeps this data current.
• Software license management — track OEM, volume, subscription, and per-user licenses against actual installations.
• Knowledge base — internal documentation linked to ticket categories so technicians find solutions without reinventing them.
• Reporting — built-in statistics, custom saved searches, and dashboards for SLA compliance, ticket volume, and asset lifecycle metrics. For deeper analytics, GLPI data often feeds into Metabase or Power BI — we write about this in reporting on GLPI.

All of this is part of the base open-source version. No paid modules required for core functionality.

How GLPI differs from the alternatives

The "GLPI or something else" question comes up often. Short answers:

• ServiceNow, BMC Helix — enterprise ITSM with licensing and implementation costs that run into hundreds of thousands of euros per year. Makes sense for global corporations with tens of thousands of employees. For a mid-size organization in Central Europe, it is overkill — you pay for capabilities you will never use.
• Jira Service Management — strong if you are already in the Atlassian ecosystem for development. Weaker at asset and license management. Price works up to about 500 users; above that it becomes more expensive than GLPI including commercial support.
• OTRS, ManageEngine, Ivanti — comparable in features, typically more expensive and with smaller communities. GLPI has more active development and a broader plugin ecosystem.
• Excel plus a shared inbox — works up to around 50 users, then breaks. Not a question of if, but when.

GLPI is not right for every organization — more on that below. But if you need an ITSM platform and do not want to pay enterprise licensing, the realistic alternatives are Jira Service Management or a smaller hosted product. Most of the rest cost more without offering anything meaningful in return.

Who GLPI fits

GLPI has a specific niche. It works well for:

• Mid-size organizations with 200 to 10,000 employees.
• Government agencies and municipal authorities.
• Universities and research institutions.
• Manufacturing companies with distributed IT.
• Healthcare institutions.
• Organizations that want data and code under their own control — whether for regulatory reasons or data sovereignty.

Common threads: a need for structured IT management, a constrained licensing budget, and an internal team capable of running the platform — or a partnership with someone who can run it for you. Our GLPI services cover implementation, development, integrations, and operations.

What GLPI replaces

Most organizations adopting GLPI are moving away from one of these:

• Shared email inboxes — support@ with no tracking, no SLAs, no reporting. Two technicians reply to the same ticket, or it disappears entirely.
• Spreadsheet inventories — Excel files that are outdated the moment someone saves them. A license audit exposes reality very quickly.
• Informal support — "walk to the IT desk and hope someone is there."
• Expensive legacy tools — OTRS, ManageEngine, or Ivanti installations that cost more than they actually deliver.

What GLPI is not

Setting expectations matters. GLPI:

• Does not monitor infrastructure — use Zabbix, Checkmk, or Prometheus.
• Is not a project management tool — use Jira, Asana, or a whiteboard.
• Is not an ERP and not a replacement for an HR system.
• Has no "no-code" configurator comparable to ServiceNow. Deeper customizations are done through plugins — we write about this in plugin development.

GLPI manages IT services and IT assets — nothing more, nothing less. That narrow focus is both its advantage and its boundary.

Where built-in approvals stop being enough

GLPI has built-in single-step approvals for changes and service requests. That covers the common cases. If you need multi-step approvals with parallel branches, conditional routing, or quorum voting (typical in public administration and regulated sectors), the native capability hits a ceiling and you need a plugin. For this purpose we built Cascade — a plugin with configurable workflow steps, parallel approvals, and an audit log.

Deployment options

GLPI runs on a standard LAMP/LEMP stack (Linux, Apache or Nginx, MariaDB or MySQL, PHP 8.x). A typical server handles thousands of users on modest hardware — 4 CPU, 8 GB RAM, and an SSD are enough for a mid-size installation. Three ways to run it:

• Self-hosted — install on your own server or VM. Data, code, and configuration fully under your control.
• Managed hosting — we (or another partner) operate GLPI, you just use it. No worries about upgrades, backups, or monitoring — see GLPI SaaS.
• GLPI Network — commercial subscription from Teclib (the original authors), with support and access to certified plugins.

Either way, data stays under your control — the database schema is publicly documented and the code is open source under GPL v3. There is no vendor lock-in on the data layer; if you decide to leave, you export through a SQL dump or the GLPI API.

GLPI 10 and GLPI 11

The current stable line is GLPI 10. GLPI 11 is in final beta — it brings native assets (no Asset plugin required), rewritten forms, and a modernized UI. Planning the upgrade is worth starting now, especially if you use custom plugins or heavily customized processes — details in upgrading to GLPI 11.

What's next

If you are considering GLPI as an ITSM platform for your organization, useful next steps:

• Overview of our GLPI services — implementation, development, integrations, hosting.
• How a GLPI implementation runs — phases, duration, what to expect.
• ITIL v5 consulting — GLPI on its own does not implement processes; worth thinking through before configuration.