This need was addressed in 1975 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published ANSI/IEEE Standard 488-1975, IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation, which contained the electrical, mechanical, and functional specifications of an interfacing system.
In addition to the hardware bus to control an instrument, software for the PC is also needed.
The VISA specification defines a software standard for VXI, and for GPIB, serial, Ethernet and other interfaces.
More than 35 of the largest instrumentation companies in the industry endorse VISA as the standard.
The alliance created distinct frameworks by grouping the most popular operating systems, application development environments, and programming languages and defined in-depth specifications to guarantee interoperability of components within each framework.