Software industry standards ensure consistency across products, from labeling to functionality. Compliance is voluntary but can act as a “seal of approval” and promote uniform standards of negotiation. Formalized standards, such as ISO and OASIS, establish basic requirements and provide guidelines. Membership is voluntary but rigorous, and compliance can lead to internal benefits such as efficiency and error reduction.
Software industry standards are general rules and best practices adopted by software vendors that help ensure consistency across products. Some standards are written by software industry organizations and associations, but others are less defined. Any commonly adopted policy or way of doing business can be seen as an industry standard if enough companies participate. In most cases, compliance with software industry standards is completely voluntary. However, compliance often has significant benefits.
Industry standards in building and selling software can govern everything from product labeling to platform functionality. While individual laws may regulate some aspects of the software industry, there are no general software laws. Sometimes standards are designed to help companies comply with local laws and formalized software industry regulations. More frequently, however, their purpose is to promote uniform standards of negotiation among suppliers.
The software industry, perhaps more than many other industries, depends heavily on interoperability. A program installed on a computer system must not only work, but must also exist alongside any other programs already in use. The software must be stable, debugged, and secure. It can be difficult to tell from the product packaging whether a commercial software product will perform as advertised.
Compliance with certain software industry standards can act as a sort of “seal of approval” for a software company’s products and business methods. Formalized software industry standards, such as those propagated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), establish basic requirements for software production and sales . These requirements provide general software industry guidelines.
Membership of organizations such as ISO and OASIS is voluntary, but rigorous. Members must usually agree to develop their products with a certain level and degree of care and usually must also participate in a variety of training and evaluation sessions. If a company can demonstrate that its products and services comply with industry standards and regulations, it can advertise itself as a member of that organization. It can also promote itself as compliant with major software industry standards.
Not all software industry standards are formalized or enforced as the standards supported by the organization. The phrase “industry standard” also often refers to any way of doing business that is considered common practice. If most software vendors in a local area or market sector follow certain unwritten rules, those rules can be understood as industry standards in their own right.
A company that enforces its uniform software industry specifications can also realize internal benefits in the form of efficiency and error reduction. Many software companies are large corporations with offices around the world. Without a standard way of doing business, different offices may follow slightly different patterns for scheduling, document creation, or even record keeping. Setting standards for doing business early can help streamline a company’s processes and ensure consistent results over time.
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