Windows 10 is now ready to go and Microsoft [NASDAQ:MSFT] is planning to release its latest operating system globally, on July 29, with a free upgrade to customers running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. But here is shocker. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced this week that three of his key executives will be leaving the company. 

Out is Stephen Elop, the former Nokia [NYSE:NOK] CEO who came back to Microsoft after the companies merged last year. Elop oversaw the Microsoft Devices Group (MDG), which includes Nokia phones and the Surface tablet. Replacing him is Terry Myerson, a top lieutenant of Nadella and Windows boss, who will lead the newly combined Windows and Devices Group (WDG). According to Business Insider, Myerson will also overlook Bing and MSN.

The second ousted executive is Kirill Tatarinov, the head of Microsoft's Business Solutions, the role that Nadella had previously held before becoming CEO. Tatarinov oversaw Microsoft's Dynamics unit, a rival to Salesforce [NYSE:CRM] customer relationship management service (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Scott Guthrie, another Nadella top lieutenant, who currently leads the Cloud and Enterprise (C&E) group, will now also lead the Dynamics products development teams.

Eric Rudder, the third executive who will leave the company, oversaw Microsoft's "Advanced Strategy" team, which was responsible for facilitating relationships between the disparate teams at the company. The responsibility will now be handed to Qi Lu, another of Nadella's top lieutenants. Qi Lu currently leads the Application and Services Group (ASG), which is focused on reinventing productivity.

Although all of Nadella's top lieutenants are in control over Microsoft’s operations, the problems for Microsoft are far from over.

According Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini, Microsoft will be facing currency headwinds and weakness in commercial licensing over the next three fiscal years. Microsoft's commercial licensing segment, which sells software and services like Office, Office 365, Exchange, and SQL Server to large corporations, and makes up more than a third of Microsoft's overall revenue, continued to see a downward trend in the fiscal third-quarter. 

Many analysts, besides Goldman Sachs, believe that the direction downwards will continue as worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall again in 2015, for the fourth consecutive year. 

Microsoft addressed the currency issues in their latest financial statement, by introducing their constant currency methodology as a tool for assessing how their underlying businesses performed, excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. Microsoft argued that weak licensing revenue could be offset by the commercial cloud revenue, which grew 106% year-over-year, as more businesses are paying to use software, including Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online, housed in Microsoft-managed data centers. 

While the cloud business is becoming Microsoft’s fastest growing segment with an annualized revenue approaching $6.3 billion, Microsoft has not disclosed profit information as the Azure platform is facing fierce competitors, such as the Amazon Web Services (AWS), [NASDAQ:AMZN]. 

Last month, Google Inc. [NASDAQ:GOOGL] announced that it will slash prices on its cloud platform by 30%, putting new pressure on rival AWS and Microsoft. In response, Microsoft is offering $10,000 a month of Azure credits for one year, starting July 1, for start-up companies that qualify for its Microsoft BizSpark Plus program. 

From our technical viewpoint, MSFT has been trading in a symmetrical chart pattern since sometime in mid-2014. The stock failed to break out the $49 resistance level in November 2014, as well as in April 2015. The stock has now pulled back 8.53% from the 52-week high, and is on the rebound. 

There are bullish signs as the stock is trading above the 50-day SMA and the “golden cross” has now emerged. Nonetheless, MSFT needs to break out the trendline resistance, at $46.50 per share level, in order to move higher.

Analyst Rick Sherlund at Nomura Securities rated MSFT as a Buy and set his price target to $55 on June 16, after Microsoft announced at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, California that it will be releasing “Halo 5: Guardians” in late October and that the Xbox One gaming console will have backward compatibility for Xbox 360 titles. 

Microsoft will report its next quarterly earnings on July 21. The revenue consensus is $22.10 billion, down 5.5% year-over-year, and EPS of $0.56, up 1.8% year-over-year.

Disclosure: No positions in MSFT or any other companies mentioned.