I'm curious, why don't they just provide Windows Server 2008 R2? With the Desktop Experience installed, it's functionally identical to Windows 7, and you can license an unlimited copies on Windows Server Datacenter Edition, which is $3,000 per CPU.

I have a hosted WS2008R2 instance that I can RDP into and use for whatever I want. Are there some other licensing constraints that prevent WS2008 from being used in that manner?