According to the company, the Nextcloud Box is a secure, private, self-hosted cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) platform. It makes hosting a personal cloud simple and cost effective whilst maintaining a secure private environment that can be expanded with additional features via apps.
“It has been a great co-operation with amazingly agile teams at Canonical and WDLabs,” said Frank Karlitschek, Founder and Managing Director, Nextcloud.
“Empowering home users to sync and share their data with a secure, privacy preserving solution built on a combination of cutting edge software and hardware platforms is no panacea and we’re proud to have delivered together!”
What’s in the Box?
The Nextcloud Box consists of a hard drive and a case that can be complemented by a Raspberry Pi 2 or a similar credit-card sized computer. The pre-configured platform is designed to handle file storage and syncing, communication and according to Nextcloud, requires no maintenance and enables users to install more functionality through apps like Spreed, OpenHab and Collabora Online. The box offers 1TB of storage at the price point of about $80 (USD).
Key WD components including the WD PiDrive and SanDisk SD card would deliver a device with the flexibility and openness to enable learning and experimenting, with easy installation and allowing replacement of components, adding functionality and capabilities like more storage space, networking interfaces and other addons.
“WDLabs is very fortunate to have connected with our Nextcloud and Canonical teammates, and have found it to be a perfect fit of complementary capabilities coupled with high-speed co-development,” said Dave Chew, Chief Engineer, WDLabs.
“We’ve combined our latest technologies to create an integrated hardware/software platform for the Nextcloud community focused on ease of use, extensibility and affordability.”
The software platform by Ubuntu Core would enable the device to act as an extensible IoT gateway at home, adding functionality and controlling other devices and connecting them with their owner while keeping the user secure through automatic updates.
“We have always believed that collaboration brings out the best in communities and companies alike,” said Jane Silber, CEO, Canonical.
“Together with WDLabs and Nextcloud we are able to bring the first Ubuntu Core-enabled device, as an app-enabled IoT gateway, to the market and to people’s homes.”
With this collaboration, Nextcloud believes that the trio can scale and integrate its federation capabilities to solutions in other products beyond the enterprise market.
