Mitigating this risk requires changes in the approach to proposing, developing, and expanding applications. The greatest threat to an EAI project is that it won't reach that critical mass soon enough to demonstrate value and thereby sustain sponsorship and funding. Implementation of a new enterprise-wide infrastructure requires significant changes to the usual approaches for proposing, developing, and expanding software applications. Traditional software methodologies apply to EAI implementation, but only to a degree. The usual IT project targets well-defined objectives with fairly specific requirements.
Solutions are likely to fall into a single business silo.
Opportunities for combining existing systems with new software are limited at best. EAI projects are different. Solutions may target the invention of new cross-enterprise business processes not possible with the old IT infrastructure. Business objectives are often high level and vague or not easily measured. Baselines for comparison may not even exist.