Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) is the family of ISO standards developed in the 1970s and 1980s and designed to facilitate high-level, high-function networking services among dissimilar computers on a global scale. The OSI initiative largely failed, owing to a fatal combination of an all inclusive standards-setting effort and a failure to develop standard protocol interfaces to help developers implement its manifold requirements.
Open systems interconnection (OSI), a network architecture that uses a seven-layered functional approach to achieve the primary goals of network architecture: modularity, simplicity, flexibility, and openness. The various tasks associated with network communication are distributed among the seven functional layers; each layer is responsible for a set of tasks and is guided by a set of protocols. The OSI model is still evolving, and many leading computer manufacturers have expressed their commitment to it.