Microsoft South Africa has officially announced a change to its top leadership position, with Zoaib Hoosen taking over the role of managing director from outgoing managing director of six years, Mteto Nyati. This change in leadership has been in the works for the past year, as Zoaib has been groomed for the leadership role while taken on responsibilities as Microsoft's chief operating officer (COO).

Hoosen joined Microsoft SA in 2010 as the enterprise and partner group director, before being promoted by Nyati to the strategic role of COO in 2013. Nyati has been in the MD role since September 2008 and will now be moving into a more strategic role for Microsoft as general manager for the Middle East and African emerging markets region, while Hoosen will focus solely on the company's South African business.

1 July marks the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, and Hoosen has taken the opportunity to cite two key areas that Microsoft will be focusing on over the next few years to capitalise on emerging global trends - the digitisation of devices in varying form factors, and the ability to process volumes of data to gain better insights.

Hoosen noted that “everything is becoming digitised and we are seeing an abundance of devices in different form factors emerging – these devices are all connected. In the next five to ten years, the world is not going to be defined by the form factors we know and love today, but by those that will come to be". Added to this "is the ability to reason over all that digitised information with vast amounts of capability, such as machine learning in real-time, and to really take all that insight you get by reasoning over that data, and improve what you can do as humans”.

Mteto Nyati will be working with leadership teams across MEA region to develop and implement growth strategies for their emerging markets. Acknowledging the fact that Nyati has made innumerable contributions to Microsoft SA’s success to date, Hoosen also stated his desire to transform government, businesses, and the lives of ordinary people through the power of Microsoft's technology. We look forward to seeing what this change in leadership yields down the line.