The company formally launched its Visual Studio 2005 toolset, SQL Server 2005 database, and BizTalk Server 2006 business process software at a dog-and-pony show here. With the feature sets of these products having been revealed exhaustively during the past several years, Microsoft's primary themes at the event were: readiness to play in large enterprises, customer applications, and reaching out to customers at all levels.

The viability of Microsoft's software as a deployment option for high-volume enterprise applications has been viewed as an Achilles heel for Microsoft in some circles. But Microsoft officials believe those days are in the past.

"Today, we should be able to completely convince you that there is no job that is too big to run entirely on the Windows [and] Microsoft platform," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

Officials at bookseller Barnes & Noble spoke of a large-scale data warehousing application developed on SQL Server and Visual Studio. Previously, the company only used Microsoft products for small-scale, departmental usage.

"Some people thought we were crazy" when selecting the Microsoft platform for the application, which requires a four-terabyte database, said Christopher Troia, Barnes & Noble CIO. The application allows Barnes & Noble to track historical inventory, calculate sales rates and make better decisions, he added.