The Swiss Virtual Campus (SVC) launched in 2000 with the goal of promoting an information society in Switzerland. The University of Geneva has been actively involved with building the SVC and the European virtual campus e-LERU, a two-year project in which eight European countries partnered to implement research-based education at a distance. Focusing on the SVC experience, this paper identifies critical characteristics of such multifaceted projects with the goal of improving their chances for success. Among the many challenges, low faculty involvement and lack of integration of "e-modules" within curricula pose a major threat to sustainability of cross-institutional virtual campuses.