ISO is an international non-governmental organization representing national standards bodies from 157 countries.  Each country has one member.  The Central Secretariat, who manages the network, is in Geneva, Switzerland.

The full name is "International Organization for Standardization". The short name "ISO" comes from the Greek word "isos", which means "equal".  This was selected as the abbreviation of the name so that it would always be the same in every language.

ISO publishes many standards.  For a full listing, see the ISO web site at http://www.iso.org/.