For a long time Microsoft has had the ability to deploy operating systems outside of Configuration Manager. This has come in the form of a tool called the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT).
MDT is a huge hit with organizations over numerous sectors and sizes. A big reason for this is that it is free; the other reason is that it is a massively flexible product that adds automation to your deployments.
Configuration Manager can also perform operating system deployment on its own as can MDT. The question is, "Which one do we use?" The answer is both. You can integrate the power of Configuration Manager and MDT with some console extensions for Configuration Manager allowing you to access task sequence templates and task sequence steps from the MDT product.
Tip
MDT gives you a huge amount of extra capabilities and flexibilities so always download it and integrate it into your Configuration Manager environment; after all, it's free.
Starting with the R2...