Workplace & AV
Microsoft 365 Business Premium in the UAE
Part of Microsoft 365 for Business in the UAE
Business Premium costs a few dirhams more per user than Standard and contains almost everything that matters for security. It is the tier most UAE SMEs should be on, most are not, and — where they are — most of what they are paying for has never been switched on.
What the extra actually buys
Standard gives you the applications. Premium adds conditional access, device management, advanced threat protection, information protection and the ability to wipe a lost laptop remotely. The gap between the tiers is entirely security, which is why it is invisible in a demonstration.
That invisibility is the problem. Nobody notices Premium is missing until an account is compromised or a device disappears, and at that point the difference between the tiers is the difference between an incident and an inconvenience.
Conditional access
Sign-in judged on location, device and risk rather than on a password alone.
Device management
Company data on laptops and phones controlled, and wipeable when one is lost.
Threat protection
Attachments and links inspected before they reach a mailbox.
Information protection
Sensitive documents labelled and restricted rather than trusted to convention.
Licensed is not configured, and that is the whole point
The recurring finding when we review a UAE tenant is that Premium was bought and never enabled. Multi-factor authentication is off for the executives who asked to be excluded, no conditional access policies exist, devices are unmanaged, and no alert fires when a mailbox starts forwarding externally.
The licence is then pure cost. Configuration is the deliverable, and it is a day or two of work rather than a project — which makes the gap between what is paid for and what is protecting you particularly hard to justify.
Mixing tiers, because uniform licensing overspends
Buying one high tier for everybody is the commonest licensing mistake. Management and finance handling sensitive material need Premium; frontline staff who need email and Teams on a phone often need considerably less.
A licence review before renewal reliably finds two things: people who left still holding licences, and a uniform tier that could be mixed. Both are money, and neither requires changing anything anyone actually uses.
Tier by role
Premium where the risk is, lighter licences where it is not.
Leaver audit
Assigned licences checked against employed staff, which always finds some.
Renewal timing
Changes made before the term renews rather than after it locks.
Billing in AED
Purchased through a partner in dirhams with the renewal position understood upfront.
What’s included
- Tenant security baseline
- Multi-factor authentication rollout
- Conditional access policies
- Device enrolment and remote wipe
- Threat protection configuration
- Information protection labels
- Licence review and tier mixing
- Admin handover and documentation
Platforms we support
How we deliver
- 01
Discover
We map your current setup, constraints and priorities before proposing anything.
- 02
Architect
A written design with fixed deliverables, so scope is agreed before work starts.
- 03
Implement
Phased rollout with rollback points — production is never left in an unknown state.
- 04
Support
A named engineer, agreed response times and a handover your team can actually run.
Common questions
Other Microsoft 365 & Workspace
Microsoft Teams
Teams for UAE organisations — meeting rooms, external collaboration and voice within what is licensed here.
See more →SharePoint & OneDrive
File storage that replaces the office server — structure, permissions and retention decided rather than inherited.
See more →Exchange & Business Email
Business email for UAE companies — migration without loss, and the DNS records that stop your domain being spoofed.
See more →