There has been a lot of questions about the hardware required to use Exchange UM.  There has also been about a lot of talk in how to work around the current supported hardware.

Microsoft and their UM Specialist Partners are offering a UM test lab in a box kit.  This kit includes a AudioCodes MediaPack 114 FXO gateway and two hours of over the phone consulting time all for a low low price of $1000.  But wait there is more.... ok not really but the offer will expire by November 1, 2006.

I worked with AdTech Global to get my company setup with UM and was very pleased with their ability to get everything working despite using early beta 1 versions of Exchange 2007.  Of course each of the partners has their specific focus areas so please choose for yourself.

You will need to provide your own test domain and x64 compatible server to run Exchange.  Also, it would make sense that you would need a compatibile PBX.

Source: You had me at EHLO

More info: 

Goal of Trial Kit

The goal of the trial kit is to provide you with the opportunity to find out more about Exchange UM. Primarily designed to work with minimal telephony configuration, the trial kit contains the gateway and assistance you need to set up Exchange UM for limited lab testing in a cost-effective and hassle-free manner. Business decision makers and non-telephony-experts in particular will find this kit useful since valuable time and resources can be channeled from setting up Exchange UM to evaluating its functionality.

What You Can Achieve With The Trial Kit

The trial kit is designed to help you set up the configuration illustrated in Figure 1. Under this configuration, you have Exchange 2007 with UM installed on a stand-alone server, and an analog VoIP gateway sitting in between the server and an analog telephone line. With the server configured to accept calls, you can test some of the most popular UM features (such as Outlook Voice Access, Auto-Attendant and Play-on-Phone) offered by Exchange 2007 simply by calling the number of the phone line. Note that the actual list of UM features available for testing under this setup is dependent on your PBX model and configuration. More complex features such as Call Transfer may not be available. Call Answering is not available under this setup. For questions on features availability, please contact the UM Specialist Partner (listed in Table 1) of your choice.

Table 1: List of UM Specialist Partners