At the SharePoint Conference Microsoft announced the availability of hosted Exchange and SharePoint service offerings. Currently in Beta you can now sign up for these online via the Online Services web site http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx

Video interview with John Betz (Director of Microsoft Information Worker Enterprise Services): http://edge.technet.com/Media/Introducing-Microsoft-Online-Services

Basically SharePoint hosted online as Software + Services offer with the capability of integrating your internal AD users as well as web based users. More on this later!

Search Server 2008 now available. MSFT also announced the availability of Search Server 2008. http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserver/

I just saw a demo of the Search server interface integrated with Silverlight and how these technologies combined together provides vast improvements in the user experience.

Bill Gates "SharePoint is the place where all your applications come together"