Nextcloud has teamed up with Canonical and WDLabs to launch Nextcloud Box, a secure, private, self-hosted cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) platform built around a Raspberry Pi. Nextcloud Box essentially comes with a case, cables, 1TB WDLabs hard drive, and a microSD card preloaded with Ubuntu Core and Nextcloud. The Raspberry Pi 2 is not included with the box; users need to buy it separately. The box is retailing for $79 on the WD Store.

Jos Poortvliet of Nextcloud told us in an interview that the box is more or less a reference device that companies can use as a model for building and selling their own Nextcloud-based private cloud solutions. The box currently doesn’t support Raspberry Pi 3, and it can’t be accessed over the Internet. Poortvliet said that support for the RPi3 and remote access will be enabled in future software updates.

The most interesting feature of the Nextcloud Box is the Ubuntu Core operating system, which is designed for IoT devices and uses a transactional update model to keep the software on the device automatically updated.

WDLabs is an internal team within Western Digital that explores new ideas and possibilities.