Your office PCs still work.
Microsoft says you need to replace them.
There is a third option.
A modern, secure Windows alternative for Dubai businesses. Speed, stability, security and zero licensing cost — on the hardware you already own. Start with one PC, AED 250 pilot. Vector Digital Systems serving Dubai IT since 2009.
What Windows 10 end of life actually means for your business
Microsoft stopped issuing free security updates for Windows 10 on 14 October 2025. The operating system continues to function — your machines did not break that day, and they will not break next year. What changed is that newly discovered vulnerabilities stop getting patched. Every month that passes, the gap between what attackers know and what your machine can defend against grows.
Microsoft offers a paid programme called Extended Security Updates, or ESU. For UAE businesses on Volume Licensing, the cost per workstation is AED 224 in Year One, AED 448 in Year Two, AED 896 in Year Three — three years total at AED 1,568 per machine, after which the programme ends entirely in October 2028. ESU is cumulative: skip Year One and try to buy Year Two later, you pay for both. The programme provides only security patches. No features, no support, no Microsoft 365 compatibility guarantees beyond 2028.
The honest read on ESU: it is a three-year holding pattern, not a solution. At the end of October 2028, the question that confronts you today reappears — replace the hardware or find an alternative. ESU buys time. Whether that time is worth AED 1,568 per workstation depends on whether you use it to migrate, or just to delay the same decision.
The other option Microsoft offers — upgrading to Windows 11 — requires hardware that excludes most office PCs purchased before 2018. The requirements are TPM 2.0, an 8th-generation Intel processor or newer AMD Ryzen, 4 GB RAM minimum, 64 GB storage, and UEFI Secure Boot. Machines that do not meet those requirements cannot upgrade through Windows Update. They can be coerced to run Windows 11 unofficially, but Microsoft has said this configuration is unsupported and will not receive guaranteed updates.
For most Dubai SMBs, this means the practical choice is replace hardware now, pay ESU and replace hardware in three years, or migrate to an alternative that runs on the hardware you already have.
What replacement actually costs
The Amazon.ae search will tell you a new business laptop with Windows 11 starts at AED 2,500. That is the hardware price. It is not the cost of replacement.
Here is what gets added once you account for everything a working office machine actually requires:
- New business desktop (Dell OptiPlex, HP EliteDesk, Lenovo ThinkCentre)AED 1,800 – 4,000
- New business laptop (HP EliteBook, Dell Latitude, Lenovo ThinkPad)AED 2,200 – 5,500
- Premium workstation (Dell Precision, HP ZBook, ThinkPad P — engineering, finance, CAD)AED 7,000 – 14,000
- Windows 11 Pro licence (genuine standalone or upgrade)AED 600
- Microsoft 365 Business subscription (first year)AED 650
- IT setup labour and configurationAED 300 – 500
- Data migration from old machineAED 200 – 400
These figures exclude downtime cost during transition, employee retraining, disposal of perfectly functional equipment, and the AED 224–896 per machine you would pay Microsoft for ESU in the meantime. For most Dubai SMBs, a realistic single-workstation replacement lands between AED 3,500 and AED 7,500 once everything is counted honestly. The depreciation cycle most businesses planned across five years has been forcibly shortened to one quarter.
AED 2,500 buys you the same problems
The cheap laptop on Amazon does solve some things. It runs Windows 11 out of the box. It has a fresh battery. It might be lighter than the machine on your desk. What it does not solve is everything that has actually been frustrating you about the existing machine.
New hardware does not change anything in the left column. Same Windows that is frustrating you on the old machine is what arrives on the new one — sometimes with more aggressive defaults. The hardware refresh resets the speed temporarily. By month eighteen, the slowdown is back.
And the cycle continues. 2025 forced this replacement decision. 2030 will force the next one — Windows 12 will deprecate today's "Windows 11 ready" hardware just like Windows 11 deprecated yours. Microsoft 365 prices climb yearly. Copilot bundling raises tier costs. Hardware requirements tighten. The treadmill never ends. Every five or six years, the same forced replacement cycle returns, and the operating cost climbs in between.
Four things. Each one fixes something Windows is failing at right now.
Below: every application you use, every UAE bank portal, every government service — what works and how.
The application catalogue, the way you would actually look for it.
This is the question that decides whether you trust us. Here is what works and how it gets there. Specific products, named by name.
Microsoft and Office productivity
Microsoft 365 web (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) works identically in any browser. Teams runs as a web app — Microsoft discontinued the native Linux Teams client in 2022, but the web version is full-featured. OneDrive through browser. SharePoint web. Microsoft Forms, To-Do, Planner all work. Desktop Office 2019 and 2021 run via a compatibility layer for users who insist on offline Office; web Office is the default path.
UAE banking — every major business portal tested
Emirates NBD Business Online. ADCB ProCash. First Abu Dhabi Bank Business Online. Mashreq Business. Dubai Islamic Bank Business. Commercial Bank of Dubai. RAKBANK. Sharjah Islamic Bank. All are web portals that work identically in Chrome. Hardware token compatibility — the USB e-tokens some banks issue for high-value transactions — we verify per customer in the pilot before quoting.
UAE government — tested and confirmed
FTA VAT filing portal. DET (Dubai Economy and Tourism). DED (Department of Economic Development). GDRFA Dubai (residency, visa, Emirates ID). MOHRE (labour, work permits). MOI services. Dubai Customs. Ajman Free Zone authority portals. RAKEZ. JAFZA. DAFZA. UAE Pass authentication works through browser; the OTP flow goes through your phone the same way it does on Windows.
Accounting and ERP
Tally and TallyPrime current versions. Desktop Tally runs through a compatibility layer with full multi-user support; TallyPrime Cloud runs natively. Zoho Books. QuickBooks Online. Sage Business Cloud. SAP Business One web access. Oracle NetSuite. Odoo. For Tally specifically — the killer app for Dubai accounting firms — we test your exact configuration with your actual data file during the AED 250 pilot before quoting fleet migration.
Communication and collaboration
WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Business, available as a desktop application or pinned browser tab. Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams (web), Skype Business, Slack, Telegram, Signal. All work.
Remote access and support
AnyDesk and TeamViewer have native Linux versions identical to Windows. Microsoft Remote Desktop to Windows servers works through Remmina, which most of our installers prefer to Microsoft's own RDP client. Splashtop, Chrome Remote Desktop, business VPNs (Cisco AnyConnect, OpenVPN, WireGuard) all native.
Design and creative
GIMP (free, professional-grade image editing). Krita (digital painting). Inkscape (Illustrator alternative). Canva (web). Figma (web). DaVinci Resolve (video editing, free). Adobe Photoshop CC 2020 and 2021 run through a compatibility layer; current Creative Cloud subscriptions (2023+) are best served through a Windows VM, which we set up if required.
AI tools — all browser-based, all identical
ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Meta AI. All work the same way on this system as on Windows. The "Copilot in Windows" feature is replaced by Copilot in the browser — same Copilot, same account, same answers.
Printers and scanners
The vast majority of HP, Brother, Canon and Epson office printers and scanners work plug-and-play through the Linux printing system (CUPS) and scanner system (SANE). Network printers usually detect themselves. We verify your specific models in the pre-quote audit. Specialty receipt printers and barcode scanners are verified per customer.
What needs a workaround — the honest list
AutoCAD 2023, 2024 and 2025+ needs a Windows VM. We include this in the quote when required, typically AED 750 to set up. Older AutoCAD (2018 to 2020) runs through the compatibility layer. Custom .NET enterprise applications are case-by-case — we test in the pilot. Banking apps with Windows-only middleware (rare in 2026 but exists) we verify before quoting. Internet Explorer-only legacy government portals need a VM. This is the full list of caveats. If your business depends on an application not listed above and you are unsure whether it will work, the pilot exists exactly for this question. AED 250 to find out for certain on one of your actual machines with your actual data.
My hardware can't run Windows 11. What now?
The hardware exclusion is the largest single source of frustration we hear. Machines bought in 2017, 2018 — still under depreciation, still working, still on the books as assets — disqualified because Microsoft chose TPM 2.0 as the line. These are the office PCs we migrate every week. If your machine is in this list, our service runs on it.
If your machine is not named above, it almost certainly still works with our service. The hardware requirement floor is dramatically lower than Windows 11's: 4 GB RAM minimum (8 GB recommended), 64-bit processor of any vintage from the last 12 years, 60 GB free disk space, and a working network connection. For machines with 2 GB of RAM and a spinning hard drive, we recommend a small upgrade first — AED 100 to 200 for a RAM module, AED 150 to 250 for a SATA SSD — before migration. The combined effect of upgraded RAM, an SSD, and our service on a 7-year-old PC is dramatic. Customers consistently describe it as faster than the new AED 2,500 laptop they were considering.
These machines have 5 to 7 years of productive life remaining. Replacing them is environmental waste and unnecessary capital expense.
What about viruses, ransomware, phishing?
The most common question we get from finance managers and CFOs. The honest answer takes a few paragraphs because the threat model is genuinely different from Windows.
Are there viruses for this system?
In practice, for office desktop use, almost none. The Windows malware that hurts Dubai offices every week is written for Windows binary architecture — the .exe format. That format does not execute on Linux. A staff member who downloads "DHL_invoice.exe" from a phishing email and double-clicks it gets nothing — the system does not know what to do with the file. The same holds for Word macro viruses, which execute as Visual Basic code inside Microsoft Office on Windows; the native Linux productivity suite and Microsoft 365 web do not run those macros.
Browser-based threats still exist on this system, the same way they exist on Windows — fraudulent websites, credential phishing pages, malicious JavaScript. These are sandboxed by Chrome or Firefox in exactly the same way as on Windows. The browser is the browser, regardless of operating system underneath. What this system does not need: a third-party antivirus subscription. That is not because viruses are impossible — it is because the practical threat surface for desktop business use is small enough that the antivirus industry has not built a Linux desktop product market.
What about ransomware?
The commodity ransomware ecosystem targets Windows almost exclusively. Different binary format, different file system permissions, different infection vectors. The economics of writing desktop Linux ransomware do not work out for the criminals — too few targets, more technical users on average, less standardised attack surface. Linux servers get attacked because they hold valuable data and run public-facing services; Linux desktops are attacked vanishingly rarely. We have installed this service for fifteen years' worth of customers across Dubai, and never had a ransomware incident on a deployed workstation.
My staff clicks phishing links. Does that still hurt us?
Dramatically less than on Windows. On a Windows machine, the .exe attached to a phishing email executes on click — and that single click can encrypt your network drive, exfiltrate accounting data, install a keylogger. On this system, the same email arrives, the same staff member clicks the same link or downloads the same attachment, and the malicious payload simply does not run. The damage radius contracts from "the entire office network" to "this user's own home folder, at worst." Your network shares, your accounting data, your customer database stay protected.
Is Windows 11 actually good?
Honest take, since you might be asking this exact question right now.
Windows 11 works. It runs the software it is supposed to. For users who get a brand-new compatible PC and use it for browser-based work, it is competent. The reason most users are unhappy with it is not that it is broken — it is that it has been designed for Microsoft's commercial priorities, not the user's productivity. The specific frustrations we hear from Dubai customers, ranked by frequency:
If these things bother you — and they bother most users — there is a third option. The operating system can do what Windows does without doing any of the things above. That is what this service installs.
Is this alternative actually reliable?
Fair question. The instinct to assume free software is hobbyist software is reasonable in most contexts. It is wrong here, and the reasons matter.
The same software runs critical infrastructure globally. The operating systems we install — built on the Linux kernel — power the New York Stock Exchange's trading floor, NASA mission control, Google's entire infrastructure, every Android phone on earth, the International Space Station's laptops, the majority of the world's web servers, and the backend systems of most major banks. The UAE government runs Linux on much of its server infrastructure. SpaceX uses it on Dragon and Falcon. If the software were unreliable, none of these organisations would touch it. The reliability question was settled by the people running mission-critical systems before it got to your desktop.
This is not experimental software. The Linux kernel has been in continuous development since 1991 — over 30 years. The desktop distributions we use — Zorin OS, Linux Mint, Ubuntu — have release cycles, paid development teams, commercial backers, and security update programmes that extend years beyond Microsoft's typical product cycles. Ubuntu LTS releases get five years of guaranteed security updates by default and ten years with extended support. That is longer than Windows 10 got. The software is more mature, more tested, and more widely deployed than the operating system you are considering replacing.
Major corporations have already migrated their desktops. The City of Munich moved 15,000 government workstations to Linux. The French Gendarmerie runs Linux on 70,000+ machines. NASA, CERN, and Boeing use Linux desktops for engineering work. Banks including Credit Suisse, Société Générale and others have deployed Linux on desktops in production environments. These are not experiments — they are long-standing deployments that delivered measurable savings without operational compromise.
The local reliability we are responsible for. What matters more to you than NASA is what happens when something breaks on a Tuesday afternoon in your Dubai office. The reliability we are accountable for is operational, not philosophical: same-day on-site response within Dubai, 24-48 hour dispatch across the UAE, a local team that picks up the WhatsApp, fifteen-plus years of VDS history as a registered local IT integrator, a written 90-day reverse migration promise. The global software being mature is necessary; the local service being responsive is what makes it work for your business.
What we are installing is not a workaround or a stopgap. It is the operating system that runs more of the world's serious computing than Windows does. The reason it is not the default on Dubai office desktops is not reliability — it is that Microsoft built a commercial ecosystem of resellers, training, and licensing that the alternatives never tried to replicate. The software was always ready. The local services to deploy and support it were not, until now.
Is this safe for my business?
The trust questions a CFO will ask before approving the pilot. Each answered with what we actually do, not what we promise.
The pilot programme
One workstation. AED 250 for the pilot. Your critical application — Tally, your accounting software, your CRM, your CAD tools — tested with your actual data file. Seven days for you and the affected staff to use it in real working conditions. No commitment until end of pilot.
Full backup before any change
Complete disk image of the original Windows installation, kept on external storage we provide. The image is restorable at any time during the first 90 days at no additional cost. We do not touch your machine until the image is verified.
Reverse migration promise — in writing
If after pilot, or after deployment, you decide this does not fit your business, we restore the original Windows installation from the disk image. No charge, no questions. The escape door makes the entry door safe.
Local team in Dubai
Office in Dubailand. Walk-in by appointment. Office line +971 4 450 4145. WhatsApp +971 56 594 1885. Working hours Monday to Saturday, 8 AM to 6 PM. No call centre. No chatbot. No overseas escalation queue. The technician who installs your pilot is the technician who supports you afterwards.
Vector Digital Systems since 2009
Fifteen-plus years serving Dubai IT. IP PBX and PABX systems, video conferencing, CCTV, networking — the Workstation Continuity Programme is a new service from an established Dubai IT integrator, not a startup experiment. Trade licence current. Physical office, registered local company, audited annually.
Regulated business systems verified
FTA VAT filing tested and confirmed working. All major UAE bank business portals tested. UAE Pass authentication tested. Government portal compatibility verified per customer in pilot. We have moved accounting firms, legal practices, trading companies, design studios, and consultancies — across industries that depend on regulated software access.
If anything in the above raises a concern you would want addressed before agreeing to the pilot, call. We would rather answer questions for a week and lose the deal than skip questions to win it.
Six steps from your call to a working machine.
Free workstation assessment
We come to your office, or we do a detailed remote audit. We look at every machine you are considering for migration. We document the applications you use, the printers you connect to, the network you are on, the data you keep. Output is a written assessment of what is involved per machine and what it will cost.
Complete data backup
Full disk image of your existing Windows installation goes onto external storage. Your documents, application settings, browser bookmarks, saved passwords, email archives — all captured. The image is verified restorable before we proceed.
New operating system installation
Boot from our pre-built media. Install the new system in roughly 18 minutes. The interface is configured to feel familiar — Start menu at the bottom-left, taskbar at the bottom, file manager with the same shortcuts as Windows Explorer.
Every application installed, configured, tested
Browsers with your bookmarks restored. Productivity suite ready. Communication apps signed in. Printer drivers loaded and test page printed. Compatibility layer set up for any Windows applications you specifically need. Customer's own data file opened in customer's own accounting software and confirmed working.
User orientation at handover
Thirty minutes per user is typically enough. We walk through where things are, how to do the routine tasks, how to find help if something looks unfamiliar. A printed reference card goes on the desk. We document who attended training.
Ninety days of priority support
Direct number to our team during working hours. Most issues are minor and resolved on the call. On-site visit if needed at no charge during the support window. Two weeks before the 90 days end, we contact you with an optional annual support contract proposal — entirely your choice whether to renew.
From your initial enquiry to a working machine, typically three to five days for a single PC pilot. Fleet rollouts schedule around your business calendar. Most customers start with one workstation — usually the slowest or most-problematic — and migrate others progressively as they age out.
Start with one PC. Pay per machine. No subscription.
Most customers begin with their slowest or most-problematic machine and migrate others progressively as they age. No minimum. No subscription. Volume discounts apply automatically if you batch five or more.
- Operating system installation
- Up to 8 core applications
- 30 minutes user orientation
- 30 days standard support
- Data backup included
- Same-day completion
- Full operating system with productivity suite
- Up to 15 applications configured
- 1 hour user training
- 90 days priority support
- Full data migration
- Printer and scanner setup
- Cloud sync configuration
- Unlimited applications
- 2 hours of user training per workstation
- 1 year priority support
- Data backup and archive
- Active Directory integration
- Group policy configuration
- Quarterly health checks
The questions we get from Dubai buyers before, during, and after the pilot.
Written the way the questions actually arrive. Tap any to see the answer.
Yes, the operating system underneath is a modern Linux distribution typically Zorin OS, Linux Mint, or AnduinOS depending on the user profile. The desktop is configured to look and feel like Windows: Start menu in the bottom-left, taskbar at the bottom, familiar file manager. Most users do not notice the difference for the first week of use. The technology underneath does not matter to the user the experience and the apps are what matter, and those are familiar.
Windows 11 works. The reason most users dislike it is not that it is broken it is that it has been designed for Microsoft's commercial priorities. Forced Microsoft account, telemetry by default, ads in the Start menu, forced restart updates, Copilot integration without meaningful opt-out, hardware exclusion of perfectly functional PCs. None of these are deal-breakers individually. Together they describe an operating system that increasingly treats the user as a product rather than a customer.
If your PC meets Microsoft's requirements TPM 2.0, 8th-generation Intel or newer Ryzen, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB disk, UEFI Secure Boot go to Settings, Update and Security, and the upgrade will be offered through Windows Update. If your PC does not meet those requirements, your three options are: pay Microsoft for Extended Security Updates and delay the question for up to three years, replace the hardware, or migrate to a free Windows alternative on the hardware you already own.
Depends on your usage. For businesses that use Outlook for email with a custom domain, Teams for meetings, and SharePoint for shared documents yes, the subscription is worth it and continues to work fine with this system. For businesses that just need a productivity suite, the native alternatives like LibreOffice and OnlyOffice are free and competent.
Three honest places to look. One: audit your Microsoft 365 licences most companies are paying for tiers their staff do not fully use. Two: move from desktop to web-based productivity wherever possible. Three: extend hardware life on existing PCs instead of forced replacement cycles. The Workstation Continuity Programme handles the third one; the first two you can do this week without us.
Nothing on our end. Your machine continues to work the way it did the day we installed it. Linux distributions release new major versions every 2-3 years; the upgrade path is free and automatic, with full backward compatibility. The forced-replacement cycle Microsoft has trained users to expect does not apply here.
Almost certainly yes. The hardware floor is dramatically lower than Windows 11's. If your machine has 4 GB of RAM or more, a 64-bit processor from the last twelve years, and a working disk, you are in the clear. For machines with 2 GB of RAM or a spinning hard drive, we recommend a small upgrade first AED 100-200 for RAM, AED 150-250 for an SSD which transforms how the machine performs.
Yes including multi-user setups and complex licensing. The desktop version of Tally and TallyPrime runs through a compatibility layer. TallyPrime Cloud, the web version, works natively. We test your exact Tally setup with your actual data file during the AED 250 pilot before quoting fleet migration.
Yes Emirates NBD Business Online, ADCB ProCash, FAB Business, Mashreq, Dubai Islamic, Commercial Bank of Dubai, RAKBANK, Sharjah Islamic Bank, all tested and working. They are web-based and run identically in Chrome. Hardware token compatibility for high-value transactions is verified per customer.
Yes, tested and confirmed. The FTA portal is web-based and works identically. UAE Pass authentication works through browser. Submission, download of returns, payment workflows all functional.
The vast majority of HP, Brother, Canon and Epson office printers and scanners work plug-and-play through the Linux printing and scanning systems. Network printers usually detect themselves on the network. We verify your specific models in the pre-quote audit.
For most users, no and that is actually fine, because the free alternatives are excellent. GIMP for general photo editing. Krita for digital painting. Inkscape for vector and design work. For users who specifically need Photoshop, CC 2020 and 2021 run through a compatibility layer; CC 2023 and newer are best served through a Windows VM, which we set up at additional cost if required.
AutoCAD 2018 to 2020 runs through the compatibility layer with some configuration. AutoCAD 2023 and newer need a Windows VM, which we set up typically AED 750 for the setup. Alternatives that run natively include LibreCAD and QCAD for 2D work; FreeCAD for 3D parametric.
Less than they expect. The desktop is configured to look familiar same Start menu position, same taskbar, same file manager behaviour. The applications they use every day open the same way and behave the same way. We include 30 to 60 minutes of user orientation at handover. Average staff member is productive on day one.
In practice for desktop business use, almost none. Windows malware does not execute on this system the .exe binary format and Word macro virus mechanism that hurt Windows offices do not work on Linux. Browser-based threats still exist and are sandboxed by Chrome or Firefox the same way as on Windows. Linux desktop has effectively no commodity ransomware ecosystem. The threat model is fundamentally different from Windows.
The ransomware industry targets Windows because that is where the desktop volume is. Different binary format, different permission model, different infection vectors. Linux servers get attacked because they hold valuable data; Linux desktops get attacked vanishingly rarely. We have installed this system for years of customers and never had a ransomware incident on a deployed workstation.
Dramatically less. On Windows, the .exe attached to a phishing email executes on click that single click can encrypt your network drive. On this system, the same email arrives, the same attachment downloads, and the malicious payload simply does not run. The damage radius contracts from your entire office network to this user's own folder, at worst.
Yes, measurably more so than Windows for many workloads. The Linux kernel underneath has been in continuous development since 1991, runs the New York Stock Exchange, Google's infrastructure, NASA mission control, every Android phone, the International Space Station, and the majority of the world's banks and web servers. Major corporations including the City of Munich, the French Gendarmerie, NASA, CERN and Boeing have migrated to Linux desktops in production. The software's reliability is not the question. What matters to you is the local service that deploys and supports it that is what Vector Digital Systems is accountable for, and that is where we have put fifteen years of track record.
Yes, fully. Microsoft 365 web access Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint works identically in any browser on any operating system. Your subscription continues unchanged. If you have been using the desktop versions of Office, we set up either the web versions or the compatibility-layered desktop versions depending on your preference.
Typically 90 minutes per workstation on first deployment. The technician does backup, system installation, application setup, data migration, and user orientation in a single visit. Once we have migrated one machine in your office, subsequent machines often complete faster because we know your setup.
That is exactly what the AED 250 pilot exists for. We migrate one of your machines, install your critical applications, test with your actual data file. You have seven days to use it in real working conditions. If it does not work for your business, we restore your original Windows installation from the disk image at no additional charge.
Yes. We keep a complete disk image of your original Windows installation. If you decide to roll back, within 90 days of migration, we restore your original Windows installation from the image at no additional cost. The escape door is real and written into the service.
No. The system manages itself with automatic background updates. Software installs from a built-in app store similar to a phone. We include 90 days of direct support most customers do not use it because nothing goes wrong. For businesses that want ongoing support, an annual contract is available from AED 150 per workstation per year.
We are not selling you hardware. Your existing PCs have years of useful life remaining. We charge for the service of extending that life the migration work, the configuration, the support not for replacing equipment that works. Software cost is zero because the operating system and apps we install are free.
Yes. The operating systems we install Zorin OS, Linux Mint, AnduinOS are released under open-source licences that explicitly permit commercial use without licence fees. The same software powers Google's infrastructure, the New York Stock Exchange, and the International Space Station. Zero licence violations.
Workstation migration across the UAE
Vector Digital Systems serves customers across all seven emirates. Most of our work happens in Dubai, with established presence in Sharjah, Ajman, Abu Dhabi and the northern emirates. On-site visits within Dubai are typically same-day or next-day; other emirates within 24 to 48 hours. Remote setup available for all locations when on-site is not required.
Dubai 45 named areas
DIFC and DMCC for finance and trading licences. JLT (Jumeirah Lakes Towers) for SME holding companies. JAFZA and Jebel Ali for logistics and trading. Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City, Dubai Studio City, Dubai Knowledge Park, Dubai Production City (formerly IMPZ), Dubai Outsource City — the TECOM free zone cluster covering tech, media, education and back-office services. Dubai Silicon Oasis for technology and electronics businesses. Dubai Healthcare City for medical and pharmaceutical operations. Dubai Design District (d3) for design and creative agencies. Dubai South and Dubai World Central (DWC) for aviation, logistics and the newer commercial expansion. Dubai Investments Park for mixed industrial-commercial operators.
Business Bay for mid-tier offices and emerging corporates. Downtown Dubai for headquarters and premium addresses. The Sheikh Zayed Road corridor — Dubai's commercial spine, dense with mid-rise office towers. Trade Centre area for legacy commercial operations. Festival City for retail-anchored commercial. Garhoud and Oud Metha for established small business clusters. Deira and Bur Dubai — the traditional commercial heart of the city, where many family-run trading businesses still operate. Karama for SME services and retail-services combinations.
Al Quoz Industrial for design studios, light manufacturing and creative-industrial operations. Ras Al Khor for trading and warehousing. Jebel Ali port and industrial area for heavy logistics. Dubai Industrial City for larger manufacturing. Al Awir for industrial supply and distribution.
Dubai Marina and JBR for sole proprietors and remote-friendly businesses. Al Barsha for SME offices mixed with residential. Jumeirah (1, 2, 3) for high-end home offices and small consultancies. Umm Suqeim for similar profile. Mirdif and Dubailand for residential-with-business and home office setups. Motor City for SME offices in mixed residential-commercial development. Arabian Ranches, The Springs and Emirates Hills for executive home offices and small advisory firms. JVC (Jumeirah Village Circle) for growing SME activity in newer residential developments. International City for trading-focused SMEs. Discovery Gardens and Al Furjan for similar residential-with-business mix.
Sharjah 4 commercial areas
Sharjah Industrial Area for manufacturing and trading. SAIF Zone (Sharjah Airport International Free Zone) for logistics-anchored businesses. Sharjah Media City (Shams) for media, content and creative operations. Al Nahda Sharjah for SME services bordering the Dubai-Sharjah commercial corridor. We schedule Sharjah visits alongside Dubai work whenever possible to minimise customer cost.
Abu Dhabi 6 areas
ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market) for international financial services and the Al Maryah Island commercial cluster — the closest Abu Dhabi equivalent to DIFC. Mussafah for industrial and SME concentration, dense with Indian-owned trading businesses similar in profile to Al Quoz. Khalifa City and Mohammed Bin Zayed City for mixed residential-commercial and growing SME activity in the eastern Abu Dhabi expansion. Al Ain for the second-city commercial market, separate from Abu Dhabi city and with its own established business community. ICAD (Industrial City of Abu Dhabi) for manufacturing and larger industrial operators stepping up from Mussafah-scale operations.
Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain
Ajman Free Zone for cost-conscious SMEs and trading licences. RAKEZ (Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone) for industrial and trading operators in the northern emirate. We cover Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain on a scheduled basis — most work outside Dubai-Sharjah-Abu Dhabi is coordinated as combined visits to manage travel time efficiently.
Working with you wherever your office is
For business locations outside the named areas above, contact us and we will confirm coverage and travel logistics. We have migrated workstations from Liwa to Khor Fakkan when the customer's business depends on it. Remote setup is available for any UAE location when an on-site visit is not necessary. Our office line and WhatsApp numbers are answered Monday to Saturday, 8 AM to 6 PM, by the same team that handles your service.
Start with one PC
Call us. Send a WhatsApp. Email if that is easier. The first conversation is free, takes about ten minutes, and ends with you knowing whether this is worth pursuing for your specific situation.
Pilot machine — AED 250 — one PC, seven days
One PC, your applications, your data, seven days. If it does not fit your business, we restore Windows at no additional charge. That is the entire commitment.
Beyond the Workstation Continuity Programme, VDS handles the full IT support stack for Dubai businesses. Each of the services below is a standalone offering or part of a combined AMC.