Quietly and unobtrusively, a new hand has taken the helm and is steering the Microsoft ship through South African waters.

When I meet him, Frazer is wearing a light grey shirt that matches his eyes, and he is relaxed and talkative despite admitting he hasn`t had much sleep as a result of Microsoft`s end-of-year wrap-up. Called “Scrubs” within the company, this time of year sees each subsidiary collate data of its annual performance, split it multiple ways, and present it to the regional team, in this case EMEA. The EMEA team likewise slices and dices the data, extrapolates some information and bubbles it up to Redmond, which in turn comes up with a strategy for the coming year.