Carol, as an introduction, I am Information Resource Management professional with several years of experience in Information Architecture, Business Process Modeling, Data Warehousing, etc., with some exposure to Enterprise Applications Integration. I highly appreciate you writing this article and putting the complex issue of EAI in perspective.

In addition to the other imperatives cited in your discourse, you alluded to, but did not specifically address the underlying need of enterprises serious about embracing this technology, and indeed this discipline, would be well served to get their data and process house in order, i.e., develop/obtain comprehensive, enterprise-wide, Data and Process architectures with corresponding matrices depicting process and data intersections as an underpinning infrastructure for EAI to adroitly address the processes and data required to successfully implement and deploy this technology to meet the business needs. Doing so would provide several advantages that would help ensure its success, to include a mutual understanding of business functions and process, a mutual understanding of the data needed to support not only the EAI at the higher level, but also the Application Systems Integration. Once the existing applications to include their underlying data has be identified and mapped to their respective architectures, the business and IT (combined) team can more readily develop a