Sure, Microsoft has an on-demand platform-as-a-service offering that executives say is akin to Salesforce.com's Force.com platform. And, sure, the company is developing a marketplace to sell its services and applications and those of its partners, again like Salesforce.com. But Microsoft, unlike the reigning rival in the hotly contested on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) sector, isn't too keen on talking about its offering. Not just yet.

Microsoft is calling it xRM -- the ability to utilize Dynamics CRM 4.0 as a development platform to build adjacent applications that may or may not have anything to do with CRM.

Rather than offering CRM 4.0 as an on-demand-only product, Microsoft is taking the "choice" route, offering it as on-premises or on-demand software, hosted by Microsoft (the upcoming CRM Live edition), or by partners. But regardless of the delivery mechanism, the code underlying CRM 4.0 is the same, with multitenant capabilities. Salesforce.com, on the other hand, offers its Force.com platform, Apex programming language and user interface technology, which enables customers and partners to develop on-demand, multitenant applications, using Salesforce.com's infrastructure.

Salesforce.com has gotten a lot of attention for its Force.com platform and programming capabilities -- and spent a lot of cash getting the word out about Force.com. Microsoft, it seems, is providing similar capabilities, but without the hype.

"We're pretty focused on doing and executing and helping our customers and partners. We're not perhaps as focused on talking about it," said Brad Wilson, general manager of CRM at Microsoft. "So we're focusing more on execution in our customer and partner network. When we have all the right customer evidence that we're amassing right now, we'll tell a broader story. We are now talking to our customer and partner base about xRM. It's our way of talking about different ways to use CRM as a non-CRM application platform. So we're by no means done in rolling out our story, but we're taking a very deliberate approach to getting people doing more and more things in different categories."

Wilson said a number of CRM 4.0 customers are building interesting applications that fall into Microsoft's xRM category. For instance, ING has built a vendor relationship management system on CRM. "It's not CRM, it's kind of VRM," Wilson said. At the same time, the US Air Force has built a task management platform to manage tasks for personnel in Europe, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses CRM 4.0 for conservation management.

"I was in New Zealand last week and we have some customers there using us to build their guide dogs for the blind matching service to track dogs, pet owners and training programs," Wilson said. "It's a very noble thing, but it's not CRM, its sort of DRM. It's the sort of thing we are seeing a lot of."

I think it's safe to say Microsoft has a few things under its hat that Salesforce does not -- the first being a tremendous developer community. The others: all those well-established development tools and ancillary software, a relatively unlimited budget, and a huge customer base to tap.

What does Salesforce.com have in its corner that Microsoft can't touch? The cool factor.