ISO/IEC 20000 is the first international standard for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM). This standard is based on and is intended to replace British Standards BS 15000. This standard was first published in December 2005.

ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 is a replacement standard for the previous series, namely ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011, namely on Service Management Systems – Part 1. This document sets out the requirements for organizations to establish, implement, maintain and continuously improve management systems. service (SMS). The requirements specified in this document cover the planning, design, transition, delivery and improvement of services to meet service requirements and deliver value.

ISO/IEC 20000 consists of two parts: a specification for IT service management and a code of conduct for service management. The first part, ISO 20000-1, advocates the use of an integrated process approach to effectively provide managed services according to business and customer needs. The second part, ISO 20000-2, is a ‘rules of conduct’ and describes best practices for service management within the scope of ISO 20000-1.

ITSM generally deals with operational issues of information technology management (sometimes called operations architecture) and not the development of the technology itself. There are also many non-technology companies, such as in the financial, retail and tourism industries, which have IT systems that play an important role, although they are not directly exposed to their customers.