As an administrator, you would be mistaken for thinking the application model is designed with you in mind and has been provided to make your job simpler. In a way, this is certainly the case; however, the application management model has an important place in Configuration Manager for users as well.

Applications in Configuration Manager support user-centric management and deployment so that you can associate specific users with specific devices. For example, you can deploy software to the user rather than the device and the deployment will be as effective as though you were deploying to a device. For many people, this was missing in the previous versions of Configuration Manager.

The deployment of applications with Configuration Manager is a state-based solution, which allows you to track the last deployment state for both users and devices. For example, much like the software updates we monitor for a specific state and then maintain that state, such as if...