Much has been made in the past two days of the fact that under Ballmer's stewardship, Microsoft has lost half its market share during the decade. The company remains a distant second to Google in the search market, is behind both Apple and Android-based devices in mobile-phone sales, and recently canceled plans for its Courier tablet device.

Ballmer's reaction to the Apple market cap news, as , was straightforward: Microsoft is more profitable. While that should assuage some investors, Apple's share price indicates the degree to which excitement in the IT arena revolves around consumer-oriented devices these days.

Nevertheless, vendors continue to report strong enterprise IT sales and helped to lead Thursday's market rally. Market leaders for the day included Intel, rising $1.06 to close at $21.76; Hewlett-Packard, jumping $1.22 to $46.94; and Oracle, up by $0.67 to $22.58. Microsoft benefitted from a FBR Capital report that upgraded the software giant's stock due to forecasts of strong enterprise spending on PCs this year. Microsoft shares rose by $0.99 to $26.00.

Storage and management software company NetApp rose $5.74, a whopping 17.7 percent gain, to close at $38.17, after reporting a strong quarter Wednesday. For the quarter ended April 30, NetApp revenue was $1.17 billion, compared to $880 million for the same period one year earlier, while net income rose to $145 million from $68 million.

"The server virtualization and cloud computing trends are driving significant business for us, as our competitive advantages in those areas lead more customers to choose NetApp storage efficiency solutions for larger and larger data center projects," said Tom Georgens, president and CEO, in the .