Greater flexibility & agility with Windows Server 2012 R2. At the heart of the Microsoft Cloud OS vision, Windows Server 2012 R2 brings Microsoft′s experience delivering global-scale cloud services into your infrastructure with new features & enhancements in virtualization, management, storage, networking, virtual desktop infrastructure, access & information protection, the web & application platform, & more. With Windows Server 2012 R2 you can scale to run your most important workloads with robust recovery options. You′ll achieve value quickly with a wide range of cost-effective, high-performance storage options & simplified delivery of multi-tenant IT services. You can build, deploy, operate, & monitor applications on-premises & in the cloud. Empower users with secure access to corporate resources on the devices they choose. Enterprise-class. Improve performance & scale capacity more efficiently to run your largest workloads while enabling robust recovery options to protect against outages. Simple & cost-effective. Deliver multi-tenant-aware storage & networking multi-tenancy capabilities for storage & networking on low-cost, industry-standard hardware. Application focused. With enhanced support for open frameworks, you can build, deploy, & scale applications & websites with more flexibility by unlocking application portability between on-premises environments & public & service provider clouds. User-centric. Deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure & lower storage costs significantly using a broad range of storage options & VHD deduplication. Windows Server licensing makes choosing the right edition of Windows Server easier. Choose from four editions of Windows Server, based on the size of your organization & your requirements for virtualization & cloud computing. Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter with unlimited virtualization rights provides the benefits of cloud-level scale with predictable, lower costs. Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard offers the same enterprise-class features without unlimited virtualization rights. Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is an ideal cloud-connected first server.