The Nextcloud Box - implementation of a user-centric vision

The vision behind Nextcloud has always been to give people control over their data. As the User Data Manifesto states, this means people should have the freedom to choose a platform for storing their data, control over data access and know where their data is.

But running a server is hard and not something the 'average' user does. This is where the Nextcloud Box comes in: thanks to snaps, we can built a platform that requires less technical skills than any other solution before it, yet keeps you and your data safe!

The Nextcloud Box is the result of the collaboration of three parties: Nextcloud, Canonical and Western Digital Labs. The three brought in their unique expertise of end user software, operating systems and hardware, collaboratively building a device that solves a very clear problem: data sovereignty in an easy, affordable way.

The Box comes as a case for a Raspberry Pi with a 1TB hard drive and the cables, sd-card and other pheriphials to make it work. The goal was that a user could 'just' connect it to power and his/her router and it would Just Work. And KEEP working, as building a one-off isn't 1% as hard as building something which gets updates, keeping your data actually secure!

It was Snappy Ubuntu which made this uniquely possible: no other platform offers this degree of simple, just-works upgrading!