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Though Bill Gates leaves his full-time duties at Microsoft on Friday, he remains nonexecutive chairman and will participate in select projects at the direction of Microsoft’s current executive management team. Below is a rundown of who they are and what some of their near-term challenges are in Microsoft’s post-Gates world.

– Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer and the man in charge of it all. Ballmer’s main challenge at the moment is to figure out a way for Microsoft to put a dent in Google’s advertising dominance now that the Yahoo deal has fizzled. Ballmer also must help Microsoft diversify its revenue base, which still mainly comes from Windows and Office. He also must lead Microsoft through Gates’ transition and prove to everyone that he can carry Microsoft forward even without Gates by his side.

Microsoft has told TechRadar that the COFEE tool it has built to help the Police look into PCs believed to have been used for criminal activity is still in Beta and has not yet been made available to forces in the UK.

Microsoft had announced that its suite of programs – named the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor or COFEE or short – was already being circulated, but there remains widespread confusion as to whether this is the case.

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There won’t be many happy faces at Redmond at the moment after Microsoft’s quarterly financial results showed an 11% drop in profit amid flat sales.

Although CEO Steve Ballmer has insisted that a well publicised takeover bid for Yahoo will not see a raised offer, the traditional stronghold of Microsoft’s success, namely software, have not performed up to expectations in the early part of 2008.

Ebullient

Inevitably, Microsoft (MSFT, NASDAQ) remained publicly ebullient in the face of the disappointing performance, insisting that the release of Server 2008 and the increased sales of both Xbox 360 consoles and their portable music player Zune shows that its business is broadening.

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