Benefits of Enterprise Architecture

Of late, I have been wondering a lot about what tangible benefits would any Enterprise Architecture initiative bring to the Enterprise.
Or put in another way, when would an enterprise be driven to set up an Enterprise Architecture practice?

Here are a few reasons for starting an EA project.

1. Rationalize / consolidate a large number of IT assets (data, application and infrastructure) that seem to have outgrown reasonable manageability (Reduce the complexity of IT Systems)
2. Create a road-map on how IT will meet the business strategy in the years to come. ( Through performing a gap analysis after understanding the current and the target architectures)
3. To enable an enterprise to be "agile". 
• For the IT systems to be able to meet the changing business demands in very short cycles
4. To enable an impact on the various layers of the organization (Business process, applications, infrastructure) due to a change in the Business Strategy or vision. Note: this is not easy for a large enterprise
5. To bring about Process Optimization which could lead to lot of IT-related optimizations
6. To bring about standardization across the organizations various sub-organizations
7. To ensure the enterprise is compliant to regulatory requirements in a standard way across the organization