What is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV)?

An independent software vendor (ISV) is an organization that designs and offers software applications. Independent software vendors can be of any size and the software they create can range in scale from small utilities to enterprise-level applications. They often specialize in specific industries or functions (for example, contact center software).

An independent software vendor does not produce hardware or operating systems. However, they will often partner with hardware vendors like Microsoft and Dell to promote their software to larger markets.

In fact, Microsoft and others have special certification programs that require the independent software vendors (ISVs) to pass rigorous evaluation criteria. This not only benefits the ISV, which can market their certification, but also the hardware or operating system businesses that have a deeper set of software applications that will run on their products.