You can allocate licenses to devices and to demographics (sites, departments, or cost centers).
A device allocation is the assignment of a license to a specific device. The device can have the product installed or not installed. For example, you purchase 10 licenses of ProductA. You can allocate the licenses to the target devices before ProductA is even installed on the devices.
A demographic allocation is the assignment of one or more licenses to a site, department, or cost center. Any device that is assigned the demographic and has the product installed shows up as an installation associated with the allocation. For example, you purchase 15 licenses of ProductA and allocate them to DepartmentQ. There are 20 devices assigned to DepartmentQ. Of those 20 devices, 12 have ProductA installed. The result is that the DepartmentQ allocation shows 15 allocated licenses with 12 installations.
Effective implementation of demographic allocations requires that the devices in your Management Zone include the correct demographic data. This data is stored as part of the device’s Inventory data; there are several ways to ensure that devices include the correct data. These methods are discussed in Section 13.0, Preparing Demographic Data.
A single licensed product can include both types of allocations. For example, DepartmentQ purchases 15 ProductA licenses. At the same time, your IT organization purchases 10 ProductA licenses for miscellaneous use throughout the organization. You allocate 15 licenses to DepartmentQ and then allocate individual licenses (from your pool of 10 IT licenses) to the devices of any other users who request to install ProductA.
For information about creating allocations, see Section 14.0, Allocating Licenses.