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Taking off the front cover of the BC200 reveals two quick-release drive bays. The unit comes with two 250GB Seagate SATA drives, that could be configured for RAID 1 for data redundancy. You can also use either of the 2 USB ports at the rear of the unit to quickly upgrade your storage should your office need more.

My favorite tech features on the BC200 has to be the integrated 8-port POE switch and the gigabit uplink port. The POE support of the switch means that you don’t need a mess of power adapters to run your phones or the GW310 gateway: they can get power directly from the BC200, removing one layer of complexity from your network. You simply plug the POE devices into the 10/100 switch and you’ll be up and running.

The Gigabit uplink port is important because it demonstrates one of the greatest strengths of the BC200: it’s expandability. The Sutus engineers wanted it to be an All-In-One box, but they also included things like the Gig uplink so that the Sutus can grow along with the IT needs of the business.

Using the BC200 the first time was quick and painless. Upon bootup, the Sutus goes though a system check and you can get a quick at-a-glance status of the unit by looking at the bank of LEDs. I plugged in the three included Polycom VoIP phones, connected the analog gateway and logged into the UI from my laptop.

The interface is very easy to navigate, even for the non-technical. The BC200 has a built-in webserver that gives users an easy way to access the shared workspace and individual user settings. Sutus did an exceptional job at making the menu system intuitive and the wizards comprehensive, though at times we did find the interface to be a little slow.

Within 10 minutes I was able to specify my Internet connection type, configure network policies for the users of the three phones, and get everybody up and running, and on the Internet.

The UI makes it easy to create new email accounts, VPN tunnels and storage quotas for the network attached storage. With the integrated domain controller and email server, I was able to create a set of authenticated accounts that automatically linked users to their phone extensions, email and private or public storage areas — all within about 30 minutes.

A note about the phone services on the BC200 — I was expecting a nightmare of cryptic commands to get the VoIP services up and running, but the BC200 made it easy to understand how the system worked and how calls were made or received. You can setup the BC200 to use a VoIP service provider like QWEST or MCI and then all of your calls will be routed over your Internet connection. (A little side note… with a little hacking we were able to get the BC200 to work just fine with Vonage)

For those who wish to use their current analog lines with the BC200, or if you don’t trust your Internet connection to give you a completely stable phone service, Sutus also offers the GW310 gateway which will allow you to join three analog lines to the BC200 while also giving you an analog out port for use with a fax machine, modem, or alarm.

Sutus has established a partnership with Polycom, so it’s no surprise that they included three Polycom VoIP phones for our review, but the BC200 speaks SIP, meaning that it will work with ANY VoIP phones using the sip standard. It will also work with software SIP clients, meaning that you can have ‘virtual’ phone sets that roam on laptops or desktops… even those that are out of the office.

The BC200 doesn’t have all the functions of a $50,000 enterprise-level VoIP PBX, but what it does have is a ridiculously simple way to create extensions, forward calls, handle voice mail, configure dialing plans and calling restrictions, and give your workers telecommunications flexibility.

The Sutus Business Central 200 is available online now from 888VoipStore.com — Prices start at ~$4000 for the basic package supporting 9 users. You can add $1500 for a maximum of 30 users. Each Sutus Gateway 310 costs $350.