The IT requirements for a new office in Dubai fall into seven groups: an internet line ordered early, a comms room with structured cabling, a firewall and switches, Wi-Fi planned for the floor, staff devices, Microsoft 365 with MFA, and backup with documented ownership. Get the first two moving before the fit-out closes the ceilings.
Part of our guide to New Office IT Setup.
What are the IT requirements for a new office in Dubai?
The IT requirements for a new office in Dubai are not complicated. The difficulty is that they arrive in the wrong order, from different suppliers, while you are also dealing with a lease, a licence and a fit-out contractor. This page groups them so you can hand each group to the right person.
Treat it as a requirements document rather than a shopping list. Some items you buy, some the building provides, some the fit-out contractor installs, and a few depend on paperwork with nothing to do with technology.
- Internet: a business line from du or e&, with a backup path if downtime costs you money.
- Comms room: a lockable space with power, cooling and a rack.
- Cabling: structured cabling from the rack to every desk, meeting room and access point.
- Network: a business firewall, switches with PoE, and Wi-Fi access points placed for the floor plan.
- Devices: laptops or desktops, monitors, printers, meeting room screens and phones.
- Microsoft 365: your domain, mailboxes, Teams, SharePoint and multi-factor authentication.
- Security and backup: endpoint protection, a tested backup, and written ownership of every account.
Which requirements depend on the landlord, the building or your licence?
This is the part first-time office tenants find out late. Several IT requirements cannot start until other paperwork exists, and the lead times stack.
Internet providers in the UAE order business lines against company documents. Until your trade licence and tenancy registration exist, the order sits in a queue you cannot see. Confirm the current document list with your provider the week you sign the lease, not the week you move in.
Buildings have their own rules. Most Dubai towers require a no-objection certificate from building management before a contractor can run cable, open ceilings or bring in a rack. Some buildings have a preferred provider for the fibre entry point, and some only allow one. Ask building management three questions early: where the telecom riser is, which providers already serve the building, and what approvals your contractor needs.
- Trade licence and Ejari: usually needed before an internet order is accepted.
- Building NOC: required for cabling, ceiling access and rack installation in most towers.
- Riser access: determines where the comms room can sensibly go.
- Existing providers: a building already served by one provider can be faster to connect.
What does the internet requirement look like in Dubai?
A business internet line is the longest lead-time item in a new office IT setup and the one most offices order last. Provisioning takes weeks rather than days in a building that already has fibre, and longer where the entry point still has to be built. Order it as soon as your documents allow.
Choose the service by what the office does, not by the headline speed. A team on Microsoft 365 with video calls all day needs a stable, symmetrical connection with low latency far more than raw download speed. Ask whether the line is dedicated or shared, what the repair commitment is, and whether a static public address is included if you need one for a VPN or a phone system.
If a day without internet would stop the business, plan a second path from the start. A second line from the other provider, or a 5G fallback on the firewall, is inexpensive next to a lost day. Our guide to the new office IT setup timeline shows where the order sits in the schedule.
What network and cabling does a new office require?
The network is what everything else sits on, and the cabling is the part you can only install once. Both must be decided before the fit-out contractor closes the ceilings and finishes the walls, because after that every change is a visible repair.
Plan one cabled outlet per desk plus spares, outlets for every meeting room, printer, screen and access point, and enough capacity in the rack to grow. Choose the cable grade with the life of the lease in mind; our comparison of CAT6 and CAT6A for offices explains the trade-off. Everything terminates in a comms room with its own power circuit and cooling, because a rack in a store cupboard is the most common cause of summer outages we see.
On top of the cabling sits a business firewall, managed switches that power the access points, and Wi-Fi planned from the floor plan rather than guessed. The office network setup and Wi-Fi installation pages cover each in detail.
- Structured cabling to every desk, room and access point, terminated in a patch panel.
- A comms room with a dedicated power circuit, cooling, and a lockable rack.
- A business firewall, not the router the provider supplies.
- Managed PoE switches sized for the outlets plus growth.
- Access points placed for coverage and capacity, with separate staff and guest networks.
What do staff need on their first day?
The requirements people notice are the ones on their desk. A laptop that signs in, email that works, a printer that prints, a meeting room that connects. Each is simple on its own; the work is having all of them ready on the same morning.
Decide the device standard early and buy against it, so every laptop is set up the same way and can be replaced without a project. Create Microsoft 365 accounts before staff arrive, with multi-factor authentication turned on from the first sign-in rather than added later. Configure printers, meeting room screens and desk phones against the network plan, not around it.
The practical side is covered in our new employee laptop setup guide, and it applies just as well to an office full of new starters on one day.
What security and backup are required from the start?
Security requirements are cheapest on day one, because nothing has to be undone. Three things belong in the initial setup rather than the first review: multi-factor authentication on every account, endpoint protection on every device, and a backup that has been restored at least once before anyone relies on it.
The fourth requirement is ownership. Someone in the business, not a supplier, must hold the domain registration, the Microsoft 365 global administrator role, the firewall login and the internet account, written down where a second person can reach them. The cybersecurity for small business page sets out the baseline.
How do requirements change for a 10, 25 or 50-person office?
The categories stay the same at every size. What changes is the scale of each one and how much can be improvised. A ten-person office can survive a weak comms room; a fifty-person office cannot.
| Requirement | Around 10 staff | Around 25 staff | Around 50 staff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internet | One business line; consider a 5G fallback | Business line plus a second path | Dedicated line plus a second provider |
| Comms room | Wall cabinet with a dedicated circuit | Small rack, cooling, UPS | Proper room, cooling, UPS, access control |
| Switching | One PoE switch with spare ports | Stacked switches, VLANs for guest and devices | Core and access switches, documented VLANs |
| Wi-Fi | Two or three access points | Survey-planned access points per zone | Survey, capacity planning, controller |
| Support | Remote support with occasional visits | Scheduled visits and monitoring | Monitoring, SLA, on-site cover |
How Listonics turns requirements into a working office
We start with the floor plan, the headcount and the lease dates, and turn this list into a scope with owners and deadlines. Where an item depends on the landlord or the provider, we chase it; where it depends on the fit-out contractor, we brief them and check the work before the ceilings close.
If you are planning a new office, the new office IT setup service covers delivery end to end, and the cost guide explains how the budget is built. Book a free office IT assessment and we will walk the space with you, or work from the plans if you have not got the keys yet.
Frequently asked questions
An internet line, a comms room with structured cabling, a firewall and switches, Wi-Fi planned for the floor, staff devices, Microsoft 365 with multi-factor authentication, and a tested backup. Order the internet line first, decide cabling before the fit-out closes the ceilings, and put the rest in place in the final weeks.
Providers generally need company documents to accept a business order, so the licence and tenancy registration usually come first. Ask du or e& for their current document list the week you sign the lease, and get the order in the day the paperwork exists. The line is the longest lead-time item.
Most offices under about fifty staff need a comms room, not a server room. That means a lockable space or cabinet with its own power circuit, cooling and a rack for the firewall, switches and patch panel. Servers are the exception for cloud-first offices; the network equipment is not.
For a home, yes. For an office, use it only as the line termination and put a business firewall behind it. The provider router cannot separate guest from staff traffic, enforce security policy, fail over to a second line, or give you the visibility needed when something stops working.
Before the fit-out design is signed off. Cabling routes, the comms room location, power for the rack and access point positions all need to be in the contractor's drawings. Once ceilings are closed and walls are finished, every IT change becomes a visible repair and costs more than it should.
On day one: internet, Wi-Fi, a firewall, laptops that sign in, Microsoft 365 with MFA, and backup. Meeting room technology, desk phones, a print solution and monitoring can follow once the team is settled. Structured cabling is the one item that cannot sensibly be added later.
Last reviewed September 13, 2026 by the Listonics engineering team.