MCI Communications announced this morning that it has adopted the Information Technology Infrastructure Library within its Global Managed Network Services operation, and has already gone through extensive evaluation of its service management processes with ITIL authority Pink Elephant.

ITIL is an emerging global standard that grew out of efforts in the U.K. to define best practices within an IT environment. A new ISO 20000 certification, incorporating ITIL is expected in early 2006, at which point MCI will pursue that certification, said John Shultz, senior director of MCI Managed Network Services. In the meantime, the company has worked with Pink Elephant to evaluate its current processes against the ITIL, both to see where those processes might need change or improvement and to begin helping its customers as they implement ITIL.

“We can work with our enterprise customers as they implement ITIL,” Shultz said. “They can also be certain that we will be handing off services to them in a way that helps them meet the standards. Customers will be able to integrate their ITIL initiatives with ours.”

The ITIL defines best practices for standard business processes such as Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, Release Management, Service Level Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Service Continuity Management and Financial Management for IT Services. It builds off a central management database to ensure the integrity of information shared within the enterprise and to create standard ways of handling routine incidents, problems and changes within the IT infrastructure, Shultz said.

“More business processes are being automated which means businesses are becoming more dependent on their IT departments for more of their business processes,” he said. “That creates greater demand for high quality and reliable IT services.”

Forrester Research has said that the implementation of ITIL among the largest enterprise customers in the U.S. will increase from 13% currently to 40% within 2006. MCI is positioning itself as uniquely qualified in ITIL expertise through its work with Pink Elephant, Shultz said.

“There are significant benefits to customers in the adoption of ITIL,” he said. “Enterprises can reduce their costs, enhance productivity, improve the quality of the IT services they deliver and internal customer satisfaction with those services and better use of its IT skills and systems.”

According to Pink Elephant, MCI has already shown a “strong focus and commitment” to delivering high quality services and improving its processes, Shultz said. The company was rated as mature in its processes for Change Management, Configuration Management, Release Management, IT Service Continuity and Financial Management. It also received high marks for its Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Level Management, Availability Management and Capacity Management processes.

ITIL implementation is an ongoing process to which MCI is committed, Shultz said.