"Horizontal scalability achieved through the implementation of a load balancing solution is easy." - makes me giggle and not want to continue reading. If one is still relying on vertical scalability then perhaps therein lies your problem.
One way to go about democratising the "cloud". Some have cheekily aligned it with how current day linux came to form. A need for a free and hopefully standard platform. :-)
One to check out that has been used internally here is DekiWiki ("enterprise-friendly"). We've also began to use it on external collaborative projects. For dev you can't beat Trac right now but Redmine may just superceed Trac. Ones I tend to avoid are TWiki (hugely extensible, but therein lies its weakness) and horrors of all horrors - sharepoint. MediaWiki of "old" is great if you need something up quicky.
Flashy site yes (-1 point for dissemination tasks) but that's a periphal concern of EU project officers and auditors especially when you consider the bulk of deliverables and milestones an integrated large scale project will have.
I think you're correct but on a macro level - what I find useful with anything EU FP is at the micro level... universities get students funded - they and academic staff push out good research in the general area of original project. It's here where you'll find the innovation. Also within the SME (micro-ISV) participation in such research activities can produce promising technology.