IT for a new company: preparing workstations, Microsoft 365 and telephony

When a new company opens its doors, staff need access to email, files and applications. I plan the IT for a new company and set it up. So far I have equipped four new companies from the start, and they have shown me which decisions are best made early and what has to be ready by the first working day.

What has to be in place on the first working day

On the first day, staff need to be able to work and to be reachable. Nothing more. For IT this means: every person has an account in the company’s own Microsoft 365 tenant, that is its own environment at Microsoft, with an email address on the company domain. And they have a device that device management controls from the start.

Managed means: the device belongs to the company, receives its settings and security rules centrally and I can lock or wipe it if it is lost. Laptops and phones set themselves up the first time they are switched on. I have described how this works for company phones in phones that set themselves up, and the basics of device management in device management with MDM in business.

For telephony it is enough at first that everyone is reachable on mobile. A cloud phone system with fixed numbers, queues and call forwarding can follow a few days later. My article on cloud phone systems with 3CX and Teams Phone covers the options. The new companies I equipped bought their devices.

What can safely wait a few weeks

In its first weeks a young company has other concerns than a complete IT handbook. Some things can therefore follow later without affecting day-to-day work:

Which decisions become expensive later

What gets expensive is not what is missing but what someone sets up quickly as a stopgap at the start and then keeps. I see three points again and again:

• Unmanaged devices. A laptop that starts out without central management has to be brought under management later. My article on taking over Macs in Intune shows how much work that can involve.
• Private accounts. If someone signs up for a service with a private email address or Apple ID, the service belongs to that person. When they leave the company, the access leaves with them.
• Missing single sign-on. Single sign-on (SSO) means that staff sign in to other services such as the CRM or accounting software with their Microsoft 365 account. Without it, each service has its own password, and with every leaver someone has to remember every single place.

When the new company comes out of an existing one

When a company is carved out of another, it does not start from a blank slate. Often the owners want to take over the existing structures or rebuild them in the new company: mailboxes, file storage, groups, permissions. These structures have usually grown over many years. A new system often cannot reproduce them at all, or only with limitations.

My advice: before the move, clarify which structures really have to come along and which the new tenant can handle more simply. For a new company in manufacturing I moved mailboxes and data from the previously used tenant into its own, with a fixed mapping of each old account to its new one. Apple devices that set themselves up and a cloud phone system came on top. The ten staff were able to work after three days.

What does the basic IT setup cost?

To get started, a new company essentially needs three things:

• Laptops. Decent work devices cost between €1,000 and €1,500, depending on requirements.
• Licences. Microsoft 365 Business Premium costs €20.01* net per person per month on a one-year term. Extras such as telephony come on top.
• A domain. That is the address at which the company receives email, for example companyname.com.

As a Microsoft partner, I book the licences through my distributor. To do so, I link the company’s tenant to my partner account. No credit card is needed: billing is to the day, by invoice from me at the end of the month. As long as Microsoft offers it, I can book up to 25 trial licences for the first month. That avoids licence costs for a while. The trial is limited to one month and 300 GB of storage, and setup and any further work are agreed separately.

With these three things I can set up the tenant, get the devices running and, if necessary, hand them to staff on the same day. Which security settings Business Premium already includes for this I describe in Business Premium: unused security features.

Frequently asked questions

Is a private account enough to start with?

No. Services that run on private accounts belong to a person, not to the company. By the time the first person leaves, that becomes a problem. Your own tenant with the company domain is quick to set up, and there are no licence costs during the trial.

Should a new company buy or lease its devices?

The new companies I equipped bought their devices. What matters more than buying or renting is that every device is in device management from day one.

How quickly is IT for a new company ready to use?

Once devices, licences and the domain are ready, I can set up the tenant, accounts and devices and hand them over in one day. If mailboxes and data have to come along from an existing company, it takes longer. In my case study with ten staff it took three days.

* Prices net, as of September 2026. Licence prices may have changed since.

Sources

• Business Premium price: ALSO Cloud Marketplace, NCE licence with a one-year term and monthly billing, as of September 2026. Product description: Microsoft Germany – Microsoft 365 Business Premium (in German)
• 25 licences, one month and 300 GB of storage during the trial: Microsoft Learn – Try or buy a Microsoft 365 for business subscription