I have only just been able to start playing with this, but it is looking good.  I'm told that it does NOT YET load on SBS, but that the issue is being looked at (the auto config tools that make it so easy clash with the pre-defined IIS settings for SBS) and the plan is to support SBS too.  I will look at how to hack it on SBS yet :-)  More info can be found at Enterprise Search from Microsoft.

So what is it? (basically, web, share and application search capability with lots of abilities, but some important ones picked out below).

Familiar Search Experience

• Empower your users to quickly find the information they need through a familiar Search Center interface

• Pinpoint the most relevant information you need with recommended best bets, authoritative sources, term definitions, hit highlighting, and query correction.

• Retrieve concise and clear search results with duplicate collapsing, allowing you to quickly review a wide variety of relevant information.

• Stay on top of new information relevant to your work by subscribing to update notifications of your search results using e-mail and RSS alerts.

• Build upon a familiar user interface and application platform that lets you customize your search experience and the actions you can take on your search results.

• Search Center. Empower your people to quickly find the information they need through a familiar, web-style search interface and easy-to-use query syntax. Re-configure the layout of Search Center elements without writing any code.

• Content Summaries. Quickly browse textual summaries of content that appears in the context of your search terms.

• Hit Highlighting. Quickly spot where your search terms appear in search results and content summaries.

• Best Bets and Definitions. Highlights editorialized sites or definitions for common search terms likely to have a single authoritative answer.

• Query Correction. Receive helpful "Did you mean?" suggestions for misspelled queries.

• Duplicate Collapsing. Find the content you're looking for faster using more concise, structured search results with grouped duplicates.

• E-mail / RSS Alerts. Stay on top of new information relevant to your work by subscribing to update notifications of your most common searches.

• Out-of-the-box Relevancy. Get relevant search results immediately, without extensive configuration using a ranking engine developed in collaboration with Microsoft Research and Windows Live search.

• Extensible Search Experience. Use powerful development tools (including Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer) to build customized query / results experiences and search-enabled applications on the SharePoint platform - from altering the appearance of your search site using XLST to enabling contextual actions you can take on search results.

Powerful enough to meet your needs now and as they grow.

• Provide a search capability optimized for business data to deliver highly relevant results across intranet and public-facing web site content. Scale your deployment to meet your needs with no pre-set document limits.

• Find information across a variety of business applications and services using federated search connectors.

• Upgrade to a multi-server topology with Microsoft Search Server 2008.

• Upgrade to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 when you need to easily index structured information and expertise information , or add enterprise content management, collaboration, or other complementary capabilities to your business productivity infrastructure.

• Take advantage of a strong Partner ecosystem to implement and further extend your Search solution.

• No Pre-set Document Limits. Scale your search infrastructure to meet your evolving needs - however big or small they are - using the same search platform across a breadth of server hardware and SQL Server database configurations.

• Continuous Propagation Indexing. Improve the freshness of your search results with an index that incrementally updates itself as it crawls your information. Newly crawled content is propagated to the query servers so people can search it sooner, without having to wait for all content to be crawled.

• Out-of-the-box Indexing Connectors. Index content on file servers, web sites, Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Exchange Server public folders, and Lotus Notes repositories. Find additional Indexing Connectors in the Search Connector Gallery

• Indexing Connector API. Extend your searches by indexing information in 3rd-party data repositories, applications, and services.

• Federated Search Connectors. Federate your searches to indexes in other data repositories, applications, and services using the Open Search standard. Quickly import or export your federated locations using packaged Federated Location Definition (.FLD) files. Find Federated Search Connectors in the Search Connector Gallery.

• Internet Search Integration. Use the same search query experience to retrieve internet search results from providers supporting the OpenSearch standard via Federated Search Connectors.

• Search iFilters. Index a wide variety of documents and file types using an interface common across Windows Desktop Search, Windows Vista, SharePoint, and SQL Server.

• Search Connector Gallery. Reference Microsoft's online gallery of 3rd-party federated search connectors, indexing connectors, and iFilters.

• Relevance Tuning. Retrieve the most relevant results across a diverse set of 3rd-party line-of-business systems and content repositories from a single search query. Use a ranking engine developed in collaboration with Microsoft Research and Windows Live Search.

• Search Scopes. Define custom sets of search results based on flexible rules. For example, define a scope that matches information having certain properties (like "people") or from certain content sources (like a specific web site).

• Definitions. Set editorial text that should appear whenever a key word or phrase is used in a search query.

• Synonyms. List related terms that should return identical pre-defined results as your key words.

• Common Desktop Search Infrastructure. Use a search infrastructure that effectively scales from the desktop, allowing components like iFilters and Indexing Connectors used for desktop search to also be used on the server. Learn more about Windows Desktop Search.

Easy to configure, easy to maintain

• Streamlined Installation. Simplified experience makes it easy to get an enterprise search infrastructure running in your environment quickly.

• Unified Administration Dashboard. Review common administrative tasks, monitor system and crawl status, and configure your search settings in a single, configurable view.

• Crawl Scheduling. Configure data repositories, applications, and services you want indexed and specify crawl schedules for when full or incremental crawls should be performed.

• Query and Results Reporting. Review your most common searches, queries with no results, top destination pages, query volume, click-through rates, and most-clicked best bets. Recognize not only the most popular searches, but also the least successful - and improve them by adding new Best Bets and content sources.

• Technical Resources. Make use of Microsoft's library of enterprise search technical resources and articles on TechNet and MSDN.

• Community Discussion Groups. Connect with your peers who are implementing Microsoft enterprise search solutions. Participate in community discussion groups here.

• Partner Ecosystem. Take advantage of Microsoft's broad partner ecosystem with expertise in extending and implementing enterprise search solutions. Find an enterprise search partner .

ttfn

David