One installation carries several organisations, kept apart.

An operator runs sixty charge points for six clients. Each client wants to see its own points, grant its own cards and receive its own invoice. None of them should learn anything about the others. Six separate sets of data, one operation.

One route there is a separate installation per client. Each one has to be looked after on its own. The effort grows with every new customer, and the sixth installation is as much work as the first.

The other route is a single installation that keeps the organisations apart from the inside. Charge points, charging cards, tariffs, user accounts and reports each belong to exactly one organisation. Whoever signs in lands in their own organisation and sees what it holds. Administration stays separate too: looking after one organisation means looking after that one alone. The technical name for this design is multi-tenancy.

An example: a property manager sees the twelve charge points in its underground car park and the cards issued to its tenants. A haulage firm on the same system sees its forty points at the depot and its sixty drivers. Each of the two sets its own price per kilowatt hour. Both work inside the same installation, without ever touching.

There is still only one installation to look after. Above the organisations sits its operator, who creates new ones and keeps an eye on the whole.

Running six clients costs you infrastructure once instead of six times. Each client still gets its own view and its own invoice. A new customer is created rather than built.