In what constituted its lowest-key product launch since the "malling" of Windows ME, Microsoft officially took the wraps off its MS CRM offering on January 21.

Microsoft's mid-market CRM competitors made more of Microsoft's release to manufacturing of MS CRM than did Redmond itself. Microsoft, for its part, issued a lone press release marking the debut of the 1.0 version, with promises of a 1.1 upgrade for the latter part of this year.

Why no bells, no Ferris wheels, no Shaquille O'Neal cameos?

Partners and customers still don't have the actual bits, for one. The product didn't ship — it just RTM'd last week.

Microsoft partners say the true coming-out party for MS CRM will be on February 19 at the DCI CRM Conference and Expo in Chicago. Microsoft is slated to follow that up with a cross-country tour of major U.S. cities designed to keep MS CRM in the headlines for a full month.

But there could be more behind Microsoft's decision to soft-peddle its first-generation CRM package, say some of the resellers upon whom Microsoft is counting to sell and service MS CRM.

Architecting the product around the .Net Framework, Microsoft wrote MS CRM from scratch. It is a true 1.0 release, warts and all.

Only a miniscule number of companies beta-tested the software (compared to the cast of thousands that typically test Windows and Office). One beta tester described the near-final Beta 2, which Microsoft released last fall, "unusable." (And this wasn't some IBM or Sun spoiler. This is someone who makes his living from reselling Microsoft software and doesn't have an ax to grind.)

MS CRM doesn't yet integrate with Microsoft's own Great Plains family of products. Microsoft is promising its reseller partners it will deliver integration with its own Great Plains financials later this year. And Microsoft is readying "migration" tools — presumably designed to help migrate customers off of competitive platforms — for a first-quarter debut.

Then there are the nagging issues of product positioning and potential ally alienation. Microsoft execs continue to insist that Microsoft isn't gunning for enterprises with MS CRM. But as much as company executives claim that MS CRM is a small- and mid-market offering, company watchers note that Microsoft typically has wet its feet with smaller companies before diving deep into enterprise territory.

One integration partner noted that MS CRM is fairly complex to set up and requires Exchange, SQL Server and BizTalk to function, putting MS CRM outside the reach of many of the smaller customers that are supposedly the target of the product.

I wouldn't count out MS CRM. Not in the least. Microsoft is betting big on its Business Solutions Division and is going to put a lot of marketing and development muscle behind MS CRM, especially as Redmond adds new modules beyond sales management and customer service, to the base product.

The question is: Will customers, especially in the midst this sluggish IT cyle, buy it? Or will they send Microsoft back to the drawing board? Write me at mswatch@ziffdavis.com and let me know what you think.