During the last decades IT infrastructures have grown wildly. New systems have been added all the time. This has lead to a chaos which makes it difficult to adapt IT fast to the changing business needs. In addition, this makes the introduction of e-Business more difficult. Enterprise Application Integration offers to be a solution.

As part of an IBM marketing plan, a benchmark study has been worked out. Initially participating companies will complete a questionnaire.

An individual analysis will then be performed on the submitted data which shows how the company is positioned compared to its competitors in its industry and against all others. The companies will be informed about the results through EAI specialists from IBM.

This study will also allow a company to identify the areas which will need to be addressed when moving to an EAI infrastructure.

The preparation of this survey covered the compilation of the questionnaire, development of a database and analysis tools and a dynamic benchmark report.

With this study IBM wants to improve its customer's awareness for the topic. As this study is part of further marketing actions, additional studies will be performed on the base of this diploma work.