The Chemicals Database is a simple yet effective approach to track a stock of products. It provides a "product catalogue" that is accessible from any workplace over Intranet (http) and the server can be operated "in the cloud".
Although this documentation deals in particular with a stock of chemicals in a laboratory, it can easily be adapted to any other "items" such as samples, spare parts, tools and other inventory.
The software does not rely on a proprietary "solution" but employs standard formats and protocols. It is freely available under the terms and conditions of the GNU Public License (GPL v2), thus being open for extensions and custom modifications.