sbs 2008 in production

For a new client with multiple branch’s would you personally use EBS/SBS 2008 hosted at a datacenter and new features of TS on the clients or look at a solution like riverbed steelheads using again a datacenter?

Basically theirs two quotes on the table 2008 SBS with TS hosted at a datacenter and five sites connecting to that to get office/exchange. (all clients are laptops and would need to work from home)

The second is again five sites, ESX hosted 2003, hosted exchange elsewhere, riverbed mobile on the laptops with a vpn to use from home, all traffic for internet/email/apps going through riverbed at the other end and content filtering and the likes to boot.

Opinions?