Windows Server 2012, which is in beta testing phase, will ship with enhancements to its Remote Desktop Services (RDS) component intended to improve RDS performance over WANs.

The product's RDS piece has also been re-worked to simplify the setup of session and virtual machine infrastructures as well as its administration, Microsoft in a blog post.

The WAN performance improvements center on RemoteFX, a technology Microsoft introduced in Windows Server 2008 to improve the rendering of graphics, including videos and animation on client devices.

In Windows Server 2012, RemoteFX no longer uses a single codec for all graphics, applying instead specialized codecs for multimedia, images and text.

Also new is the ability to progressively render graphics, which should improve the experience in low-bandwidth or busy networks, as well as a new codec that cuts down bandwidth use by up to 90 percent for media content.