Applications and deployment types can help the administrators of Configuration Manager to easily manage and deploy different software types on the client machines. Configuration Manager 2012 R2 can deploy software to collections, both device and user collections.

Users can be associated with their devices. This is a user setting, and it is called a primary device. This setting allows you to deploy software specific to users' needs. This helps IT administrators control the applications that are installed on the user's primary device and on any other device that the user might work on in the future.

Application deployment is handled by deployment types. An application can have multiple deployment types.