ISO

Stands for "International Organization for Standardization." Yes, technically the acronym should be "IOFS," but I guess ISO sounds better. The ISO works with standards institutes from over 150 countries to develop technology and product standards. These standards lead to a more efficient, safer, and cleaner development of products. It also leads to more standardized products for consumers.

The ISO is important to the computer industry, since the organization standardizes many of the technologies used by your computer hardware and software. For example, the ISO 9660 standard defines a file system used by CD-ROM media. CDs formatted using this standard can be used on any operating system that supports the ISO 9660 standard, including Windows, Mac, and Unix systems.

The ISO is similar to the IEEE, but performs a much broader range of standardizations. To learn more about the International Organization for Standardization, visit the ISO website.

Published: 2006