The event, which took place Nov. 7, 2005, also featured the introduction of BizTalk Server 2006.
The band Cheap Trick served as a warm-up act for Ballmer's rock music-themed unveiling of new enterprise software products from Microsoft.
Paul Otellini, CEO of chipmaking giant Intel, joined Ballmer on stage to talk about the performance gains that his company and Microsoft have made in taking on Unix and mainframe rivals.