Looks to be some Splunk-specific component, at least according to their blog: http://blogs.splunk.com/2013/09/09/powershell-version-2/
My final advice is on errors. We now have two PowerShell hosts, each with different requirements. When installed on a standard Windows Server 2008R2 host with no updates, only PowerShell2.exe will be running because the .NET Framework 4.5 is not available. You will see errors in the splunkd.log pertaining to the inability to start the PowerShell.exe. In a similar manner, when installed on a standard Windows Server 2012 host, only PowerShell.exe will be running because the .NET Framework 3.5 is not available.
Note that this is probably a PowerShell host and not the runtime itself:
You can host Windows PowerShell in your application. The host application can define the runspace where commands are run, open sessions on a local or remote computer, and invoke the commands either synchronously or asynchronously based on the needs of the application.
So it's very much a Splunk component and not part of the system. They just chose to name it powershell2.exe
. They could have named it cmd.exe
or explorer.exe
if they wanted.