Benefits of the Enterprise Unified Process (EUP)
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There are numerous benefits that the Enterprise Unified ProcessTM (EUP) can bring to your organization. In addition to the benefits associated with adopting iterative processes such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP), the EUP also offers the opportunity for:

1. Reducing IT costs. Implementing a strategic approach to reuse for the enterprise can significantly reducing your cost of developing software. Just having an enterprise view of architecture will lead to fewer ‘stovepipe’ applications, which are costly to develop and maintain.
2. Improved IT/business alignment.  By improving your enterprise business modeling efforts you improve your understanding of the overall business and thereby increase the chances that you will build systems that reflect their true needs.  With a portfolio/program management approach to choosing projects you prioritize and then execute projects based on business needs, thereby improving alignment with the business.
3. Improved business planning.  Improved enterprise business modeling has the advantage that it provides insight into your overall business needs and vision, insight that can be used by your executives to manage and guide your organization.
4. Higher quality. Reusing software can lead to higher quality, as reusing an already tested component can lead to fewer defects. Leveraging enterprise architectural solutions that have been tested and proved to work ensure that applications built upon those architectures will improve in quality.
5. Improved IT planning and governance. By implementing the Portfolio Management discipline, you can obtain a better understanding of and control of your software portfolio by recognizing programs, or families of related products. This can lead to better strategic planning and elimination of overlapping requirements in different systems.
6. Improved levels of service.  By understanding the 'big picture' through enterprise business modeling and enterprise architecture you are able to identify opportunities to take a systems approach to development which looks at the entire picture, not just the IT aspects of a project.  For example, a project team should strive to improve the business process as well as (re)build an application for their end users.
7. Greater adaptability.  By having an effective approach to enterprise IT issues you will be able to react to changes within your marketplace, such as new legislation or new competition, more effectively because you will have a better understanding of the potential impact of those changes and a consistent way of addressing them.
8. Reducing time to deliver systems. An improved enterprise-level software process will reduce your overall time to deliver systems for several reasons.  First, an improved portfolio management approach enables you to identify projects which are more likely to succeed, reducing the change of late and/or cancelled projects.  Second, an effective enterprise architecture strategy enables you to work to a common platform, reducing the learning curve of project teams.  Third, improved reuse increases your development velocity by enabling you to take advantage of existing assents instead of creating systems from scratch each time.
9. Increased end user productivity. By integrating operations and support into your software lifecycle, you are better able to enhance your end users usage of your system and to respond to their feedback. End user requests for fixes and enhancements are automatically included in the requirements for new releases of systems and ensure that their needs don’t slip through the cracks.
10. Increased developer activity.  With an effective approach to enterprise administration, developers can gain the technical resources that they need, such as workstations and network logon IDs easily.  This enables them to focus on their jobs, developing working software, and not on trying to get access to resources.
11. Higher return on investment (ROI).  By leveraging enterprise efforts such as an enterprise approach to architecture and a strategic reuse program, you can reduce costs and speed up development time, realizing a significant increase on ROI.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank Tim Tuxworth of Objective Data Inc. for his valuable feedback and insights regarding this article.

Recommended Reading

The Enterprise Unified Process: Extending the Rational Unified Process by Scott W. Ambler, John Nalbone, and Michael Vizdos.  Whereas the RUP defines a software development lifecycle, the EUP extends it to cover the entire information technology (IT) lifecycle. The extensions include two new phases, Production and Retirement, and several new disciplines: Operations and Support and the seven enterprise disciplines (Enterprise Business Modeling, Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture, Strategic Reuse, People Management, Enterprise Administration, and Software Process Improvement).