Europeana Cloud SWOT
1. Strengths
Brand: Europeana is seen to be a strong pan-european player
Recognised as a leader in setting standards for digital culture
Network: Europeana has a strong network including leading institutions, aggregators and member states
Role: It is Europeana's role to set up and manage pan-european infrastructures for culture
2. Weaknesses
Value: Value proposition for joining the service is not clear enough yet
Sustainability: Sustainability of Europeana and this service is seen to be uncertain
USP: Difference between this service and established leaders such as Amazon not clear enough yet
Relationship with national and regional initiatives need to be clarified
Relationship between the Europeana end user service and Europeana Cloud Service is ambiguous and needs to be clarified
3. Opportunities
First mover advantage: there are no other established players yet in culture (although new initiatives are popping up fast)
Europeana is well positioned to become the overarching Cloud infrastructure for culture that sets interoperability standards for the rest (National, regional, smart cities)
Efficiencies: Europeana Cloud Services can create a much more efficient aggregation infrastructure in Europe
4. Threats
If we don't claim space quickly others will
If we fail to create enough common ground we will not be able to get other aggregators to join
Fixed yearly budget and project-based funding
Public cultural institutions may not yet be ready to adopt cloud services in terms of the way such services are paid. //Such institutions usually prefer to buy few servers from project budget and them keep them running for the cost of electricity because this way they get more money in projects and have less costs after the projects. If they will be using cloud services, they will not get money for several years of subscription fees in a yearly project.
