Collaboration is a key to success in digital preservation. In Finland we have, within the national digital preservation services, established a successful model of collaboration with archives, libraries and museums to preserve our digital cultural heritage. Collaboration is essential through the whole life cycle of digital assets as digital preservation needs to be a dynamic activity in a constantly changing environment. In association with archives, libraries and museums we are able to build capabilities that are needed for digital preservation. We stipulate that we have been able to create a unified and centralized preservation service with a set of common specifications only through a close collaboration with the data curators.