A lot of consulting companies base the core of their practice on the MSF and MOF, especially as they integrate with the ITIL standards. This is a good starting point, but there is more to implementing these ideals than just following the framework.

You'll want to make sure that you do a technical interview with the company. You will want to ask for references for other projects that the company has done -- they should be able to give you a few customers for which they have done this kind of work. Many companies will even provide you with resumes of the engineers that would be working on the project and arrange for a one on one technical interview. Aside from this, you are really looking for a few other traits:

• Look for a company that has a methodology but that is able to work in your situation. If they aren't asking a lot of questions, they aren't really engaged and are looking to provide you only what their cookie cutter allows.
• Ask for an example design document that they have done for another company. You can usually get a sanitized version of something they have done in another location. Documentation is critically important and it will facilitate hand off.
• Talk to your local Microsoft office and ask for recommendations for a partner that can help you. They'll usually have a managed partner or gold partner with which they work closely and are willing to route business to.
• Ask questions about the whole outsourcing process and don't expect to hand the project off to be magically completed. For this to go well, you'll need to have some skin in the game to work with the implementers to be sure you are getting what you want.
• At the same time, they should be providing suggestions to streamline operations and help you through the transition. You'll want to ask plenty of questions and explore options. If they are only willing to follow your explicit direction without discussion, you are missing half of the value of having someone to partner with.

ITIL and the MOF make a great foundation for the Service and Operations side of IT. These are a good starting point for looking at your Change Management, Service Management, system availability, asset management, etc. If you are a development organization that builds custom software or develops in-house, the MSF can be a good tool to bring those practices into a common standard that interfaces well with the MOF.

None of these frameworks should be considered THE ANSWER to your IT problems. In some cases the process and committee portions might be heavy for you or they might not give you enough detail on how to implement a process. This is where experience and a deployment methodology come into play. Implementing these is a long-term strategic initiative that will need corporate buy-in as well as strong internal evangelism as it really boils down to a cultural shift in your organization. The long-term benefit is a reduction of defects during implementation (think six sigma) as well as the ability to track issues to provide transparency into processes and real metrics.

You need to build and IT baseline so you can identify what you have and match that to where you would like to be 18 months from now. This will help you build a strategic plan as you incorporate one of the frameworks. When talking with potential companies, make sure you ask hard questions about how they would interact with your company and what milestones they would established as you progress toward your goal.

It is important that you get a company that is going to work with you and your company's culture. When working with a new partner, you should to be in constant contact as you need to be part of the process. Once you have a plan for integrating them into your environment and a good working relationship, more autonomy will be possible as they learn your business and you trust them building the foundation for a long-term relationship.