Web, Virtualization, Security, Reliability, and Productivity
Windows Server 2008 R2 is the most robust Windows Server operating system to date. With built-in, enhanced Web capabilities and included virtualization technology, Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard is designed to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure while helping save time and reduce costs.

Enhanced security features help protect your data and network, and provide you with a solid, highly dependable foundation for your business. Additionally, powerful tools give you greater control over your servers and streamline configuration and management tasks.

Web and Applications Platform
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard provides organizations with the ability to deliver rich Web-based experiences efficiently and effectively, with improved administration and diagnostics, advanced development and application tools, and lower infrastructure costs.

- Internet Information Services 7.5
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard is a powerful Web application and services platform. The Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard delivers a completely modular, extensible Web server with expanded application hosting, while retaining excellent compatibility and solving key customer challenges.

Virtualization
Many organizations find that patch management, resource utilization, maintenance costs, and server sprawl are among their biggest challenges. Server virtualization technologies, including Windows Server Hyper-V and enhancements to Remote Desktop Services, can help meet all of these challenges by helping you consolidate your resources and realize significant infrastructure and management cost savings.

- Windows Server Hyper-V

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is the hypervisor-based virtualization feature included as a role of Windows Server 2008 R2. It contains everything needed to support machine virtualization. Hyper-V enables IT organizations to reduce costs, to improve server utilization, and to create a more dynamic IT infrastructure. Hyper-V provides the greater flexibility because of dynamic, reliable, and scalable platform capabilities combined with a single set of integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, which enables you to create an agile and dynamic datacenter and progress toward achieving self-managing dynamic systems.

- Remote Desktop Services

Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard provides a security-enhanced, easy-to-manage platform for delivering access to centrally managed applications and resources from the Internet by using HTTPS; you do not need to provide access through a virtual private network (VPN) or by opening unwanted ports on firewalls.

Remote Desktop Services RemoteApp completely integrates applications running on a terminal server with users' desktops so that they behave as if they were running on the user's local computer; users can run programs from a remote location side by side with their local programs.

Remote Desktop Services Web Access permits this same remote application access flexibility via a Web browser, granting an even wider variety of ways users can access programs executing on a terminal server.

Remote Desktop Services Gateway enables authorized remote users to connect to terminal servers and remote desktops on the corporate network from any Internet-connected device that is running Remote Desktop Connection (RDC).

- Application Virtualization
Application virtualization separates the application configuration layer from the operating system. It enables applications to run on clients—including desktops, servers, and laptops—without being installed, and allows applications to be administered from a central location. This enables you to run applications that otherwise may not be able to coexist on the same server.