ISO9000 is applied and used by all organisations in different sectors and industries and whilst it has certain attributes and benefits that are valuable to your existing commercial relationship, you should consider whether you wish to have a specific certification for the IT Service Management (ITSM) component of your business. ISO9000 addresses all working practices in a business, without concentrating specifically on IT Service Management processes (although they may be included at a detailed level).

ISO/IEC 20000 is a focused specification for IT service management, its terminology is that of IT service management and all types of assessment will need to be carried out by competent auditors in order to provide you with an assessment report and a certificate if successful, which will be totally aligned with your IT service management business.

ISO/IEC 20000 addresses only the IT Service Management processes, and the supporting Management System. Adoption of ISO/IEC 20000 is therefore relevant to those organisations which specifically wish to target their IT Service Management processes, and is not directly related to the adoption or continuance of ISO9000. There is however some areas of overlap between the standards.

Should the principal purpose of your business be ITSM, then ISO/IEC 20000 is virtually essential.