What Should an Office IT Setup Package in Dubai Include? A Line-by-Line Checklist
Two quotes both called a package can cover very different work. Every layer a complete office IT setup needs, and what goes missing.
Part of our guide to New Office IT Setup.
An office IT setup package in Dubai should cover every layer between an empty floor and staff working on day one: cabling, a comms room, the internet line, network and Wi-Fi, security, devices, Microsoft 365, backup, documentation, handover and the first weeks of support. If a quote leaves any layer out, you will be paying for it separately later.
Key takeaways
- A complete package has twelve layers, from cabling to first-month support. Most cheap bundles quietly drop four or five of them.
- The word included means nothing until the quote says who configures, who tests, who documents and who answers the phone afterwards.
- Firewall configuration, MFA, backup and labelled cable test results are the items most often missing from a low quote.
- Essential, standard and secure and managed describe how much of the work is done properly, not which boxes are bought.
- Compare quotes line by line against the same assumption list, and ask what happens on day two before you sign.
What is an office IT setup package in Dubai?
An office IT setup package is a single fixed-scope proposal that takes a new or refitted office from bare walls to staff working on day one, with one company accountable for the result. The word package is not a standard. It is whatever the supplier decided to put in it, which is why two quotes with the same name can describe very different jobs.
A complete package has twelve layers. Structured cabling and containment. A comms room or cabinet with power, cooling and a UPS. The internet line, ordered from du or e& early enough to be live before you move in. The network itself: a firewall, switches and the configuration that makes them yours rather than factory defaults. Wi-Fi designed from a survey of your floor, not a guess from a drawing. Security: identity, MFA, device protection and a sensible set of rules. Devices: laptops, desktops, monitors, docks and printers, built to one standard. Microsoft 365: tenant, accounts, mail, files and licences. Backup of the things you cannot recreate. Documentation. Handover and training. And the first weeks of support, when the real questions arrive.
Some of those layers are physical and sit inside the fit-out programme; some are configuration work that can happen from anywhere. A useful package names both and says where the boundary with the fit-out contractor lies, because in a Dubai tower the cabling needs a building management NOC and riser access that only the fit-out team is usually chasing. Our office fit-out IT scope checklist covers that boundary in detail. This article is about what the IT side should contain.
What should an office IT setup package in Dubai always include?
Every layer below should appear as its own line, with a quantity, a named owner and a completion test. If a layer is absent the office will still need it, and the omission will surface as a variation order or a second supplier at the worst possible moment.
The list is long because an office is long. It is also the same list whether the office has ten desks or eighty; only the quantities and the amount of design effort change. Our new office IT requirements guide explains each item for a first-time buyer, and the new office IT checklist turns the same items into a sequence.
- Site survey: a walk of the actual floor, with the fit-out drawings, before anything is quantified.
- Structured cabling: data points for desks, printers, access points, meeting rooms and reception, tested, labelled and mapped.
- Comms room or cabinet: rack, patch panels, dedicated power, cooling that copes with a Dubai August, and a UPS.
- Internet: the line from du or e& ordered on day one of the project, and a 4G or 5G fallback if the business cannot be offline.
- Network: a business firewall and managed switches, configured with separate networks for staff, guests, printers and any building systems.
- Wi-Fi: access point count and placement from a survey, with neighbouring tower networks taken into account.
- Security baseline: MFA on every account, device encryption, endpoint protection, no shared logins, admin rights held by named people.
- Devices: a standard laptop or desktop build, monitors and docks, and printers with scanning set up. Our workstation setup bundle guide covers this layer on its own.
- Microsoft 365: tenant set up correctly, named accounts, shared mailboxes, a SharePoint structure, licences supplied and recorded.
- Backup: mailboxes, SharePoint and OneDrive, and any local server or NAS, with a restore test before handover.
- Documentation: network diagram, port map, asset register, account list and the admin credentials, handed to you and owned by you.
- Handover and the first weeks: a walkthrough for the office manager, and a named contact for the settling-in period.
What is usually missing from a cheap package?
The cheapest quote is usually cheap because work was removed, not because the supplier is efficient. The removed items tend to be the ones a buyer cannot see on a walkthrough, so they surface months later as a slow network, a failed restore or an account nobody can get into.
The pattern is consistent across the Dubai offices we take over from other installers. The boxes are there. The configuration, the testing and the paperwork are not. A firewall on its default settings, access points placed wherever the ceiling was convenient, a Microsoft 365 tenant with one shared admin login and no MFA, and no written record of any of it. Microsoft publishes step-by-step guidance for setting up and securing a Business Premium tenant, and a glance at it shows how much work sits behind the phrase Microsoft 365 included.
- A real site survey. Quantities lifted from a floor plan miss glass partitions, riser positions and the meeting room nobody mentioned.
- Cable test results and labels. Without them, the first fault costs an afternoon of tracing.
- A UPS in the comms room, so a short power cut does not become a reboot of everything.
- Firewall configuration rather than firewall supply. The box is a line item; the rules that protect you are the work.
- MFA, device encryption and endpoint protection switched on and checked, not listed as available.
- Backup of Microsoft 365 data, which the licence does not provide on its own.
- Documentation and credentials handed over in writing.
- Handover training for the person who will field the first questions.
- The first month of support, when most of the snagging happens.
Essential, standard, or secure and managed: which scope fits which office?
Three scope levels cover almost every office we quote. They describe how far the work goes, not which brand is bought, and an office should pick the level its risk and growth justify rather than the cheapest one that sounds complete.
Essential suits a small team with no confidential client data, a short lease and a willingness to accept some manual effort. Standard is the right level for most Dubai SMEs: everything configured, tested and documented, with security that would satisfy a reasonable client questionnaire. Secure and managed adds the controls a regulated or client-audited business needs, including endpoint protection that can detect and respond to threats rather than only block known ones, of the kind Microsoft describes for Defender for Endpoint, and it continues into monthly support so the setup stays as it was built.
The jump from essential to standard is mostly configuration and testing time. The jump to secure and managed is partly more controls and mostly the decision to keep someone accountable after go-live.
| Layer | Essential | Standard | Secure and managed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cabling and comms room | Points for desks and printers, tested and labelled; wall cabinet | Points for desks, printers, access points and meeting rooms; rack, UPS and dedicated cooling | As standard, plus spare capacity, an as-built drawing and a comms room access rule |
| Network and Wi-Fi | Business firewall with basic rules; access points placed from a plan | Firewall configured with separate staff, guest and printer networks; access points from a survey | As standard, plus monitoring, alerting and a 4G or 5G fallback line |
| Security | MFA on every account; device encryption; endpoint protection | As essential, plus conditional access rules, no local admin rights and a password manager | As standard, plus detection and response, regular access reviews and a written baseline |
| Devices and Microsoft 365 | Standard laptop build; tenant, accounts and mail set up | Provisioning from the box; SharePoint structure; shared mailboxes; printers with scanning | As standard, plus device compliance policies and a joiner and leaver process |
| Backup | Mailboxes and files backed up | Mailboxes, SharePoint, OneDrive and any NAS backed up; restore tested at handover | As standard, plus scheduled restore tests and a written recovery plan |
| Documentation and support | Account list and port map; handover walkthrough | Network diagram, asset register, account list and port map; first month of support | As standard, plus a managed support plan with response targets and 24/7 monitoring |
How do you compare two package quotes fairly?
Put both quotes against the same twelve layers and mark each one as included, excluded or unclear. Unclear is the most common answer, and it is the one that costs money later.
Then ask five questions of every line. What is the quantity, and what assumption produced it? Who configures the item, and to what standard? Who tests it, and what does passing look like? Who documents it, and in what form? And what happens on day two: who answers when the printer stops scanning, and is that in the price or charged by the hour? A quote that answers those five questions for every line can be compared with another that does the same. A quote that answers them for none is a shopping list with a total at the bottom.
Watch the word included. Firewall included may mean a box delivered and plugged in. Wi-Fi included may mean access points bought and mounted, with no survey and no thought given to the tower next door. Microsoft 365 included may mean licences resold, with the tenant left on defaults. Our page on what drives new office IT setup cost sets out which scope decisions move a quote up or down, so you can tell a genuinely cheaper proposal from a thinner one.
Two more checks. Ask whether the supplier does its own site work or subcontracts the cabling, because that changes who owns a fault. And ask for the documentation set in the quote itself, by name: network diagram, port map, asset register, account list. A supplier who will not commit to those in writing has already told you what the handover will be like.
Example: what a package for a 20-person office might contain
The example below is a hypothetical scope for a twenty-desk office in a Business Bay tower, taken from shell and core, written to show how assumptions turn into line items. Change the assumptions and the quantities change with them. Nothing here is a price.
Assumption: twenty desks, two meeting rooms, a reception and a print area. Assumption: two data points per desk, giving forty desk points, plus points for each meeting room screen, each printer, reception and every access point. Assumption: a wall-mounted cabinet is not enough for the switch count and the UPS, so a small rack goes in a ventilated store room with its own cooling. Assumption: the access point count comes from a survey of the fitted floor, because a tower with many neighbouring networks and full-height glass partitions behaves nothing like the drawing suggests. The Wi-Fi Alliance sets out what Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 is designed for, including crowded environments, and there is no reason to specify anything older for a new office.
On top of that: a du or e& line ordered in the first week with a mobile fallback, a business firewall with staff, guest and printer networks, twenty laptops on a single build provisioned through Windows Autopilot so each one configures itself on first sign-in rather than being built by hand, a Microsoft 365 tenant with MFA on every account, backup of mail and SharePoint with a restore test, and the full documentation set. Our 20-person office IT setup guide walks through the same office in more depth.
How Listonics helps with office IT setup packages
Listonics quotes new office IT setup as a fixed-scope, itemised proposal that covers every layer in this article, from cabling and the comms room to Microsoft 365, backup, documentation and the settling-in period, with one team accountable for all of it. Every project starts with a free site survey of the actual floor, so quantities come from the building rather than a drawing. Engineers are on site across Dubai and site work is not subcontracted. At handover you receive the network diagram, port map, asset register and account list, and you own them. Ongoing support, where wanted, is a fixed monthly fee per user or per device. To have a quote you already hold checked against this list, or to book a survey for a new office, contact Listonics.
Frequently asked questions
It is more comparable and more accountable rather than automatically cheaper. Buying separately means several suppliers, several sets of assumptions and nobody responsible for the gaps between them. A single fixed-scope package puts one company on the hook for the whole result, and lets you compare like with like.
The line itself is a contract between you and du or e&, so it sits outside the package. A good package includes ordering it on your behalf on day one, chasing the installation, terminating it in the comms room and configuring the firewall for it. Line lead times are the usual cause of a late go-live.
Most Dubai SMEs do not. Mail, files and identity live in Microsoft 365, and a NAS covers local storage and backup where large files or an older application need it. A server only enters the scope when a specific application requires one, and the package should say which application and why.
The quote should say. At minimum there should be a handover walkthrough, the documentation set, and a named contact for the first weeks while snagging happens. After that, support is either a fixed monthly fee per user or per device, or charged per call, and that difference matters more than the setup quote itself.
Yes, and that is one of the strongest reasons to insist on documentation. A second office on the same tenant, the same firewall and Wi-Fi standard and the same laptop build is mostly a matter of quantities. The survey still has to happen, because the new building will have its own riser, cooling and neighbour problems.
A typical office of ten to forty people takes two to four weeks from survey to go-live, with most of that running in parallel with the fit-out. Cabling goes in early, before ceilings close, and equipment is installed and tested in the final days. The internet line lead time is the item most likely to stretch it.
Written by Srinivasan Ramachandran, Founder, Listonics · Published Sep 24, 2026 · Last reviewed October 8, 2026 · 2,410 words
