Microsoft is spoiling its own party. Even though Microsoft was expected to deliver updates to its increasingly popular Windows Azure cloud platform at a webcast event tomorrow, the wizards at Redmond decided to steal some of Oracle’s thunder by breaking the news early that it’s adding real, honest-to-goodness virtual machine support to the offering,  bringing it into the infrastructure-as-a-service market.

It’s worth noting that as of tomorrow, all the services I mention here will be available in a preview state. Jury’s still out as far as general availability.

Windows Azure Virtual Machines are based on the virtual hard disk (VHD) open specification, and are designed to enable customers to move machine images and application workloads between on-premises and public cloud environments. It supports Microsoft Server images, of course, but as has been speculated repeatedly, Azure now enables the launch of Linux server images. It’s a move towards a hybrid cloud future, Microsoft Corporate VP Bill Laing says in his official blog entry.

On that same note, Microsoft is also launching the oft-requested Azure Virtual Network feature, allowing for the extension of a network from on-premises into the cloud. That includes control over network topology, down to IP address configuration, routing tables and security policies. Also, the much-anticipated SQL Azure Reporting service will also be available.

Less expected is the news that Microsoft is launching an Azure Web Sites tool, enabling developers to code sites and applications in .NET, Node.js, and PHP and simply deploy them in Azure with common tools like Git and FTP. Of note is the fact that open source content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, DotNetNuke, Umbraco or Drupal are deployable with just a few clicks, Microsoft promises.

Also included in this Azure tidal wave is updates to Java, PHP, and .NET and the addition of Python as an officially supported language. The SDK now also supports full command line interface from Windows or Mac. And finally, Azure is hitting 48 new countries, including Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa and Ukraine.

Still missing in action is the rumored Antares application framework to deploy apps across both on-premises environments and the Windows Azure public cloud. But I have a hunch that it’ll show up by tomorrow’s “Meet Windows Azure” webcast at 1pm PT, if not even sooner.

On a final note, I have to agree with the sentiment expressed by Rishidot Research’s Krishnan Subramanian on his Twitter account: Right on to Microsoft for having the guts to revamp its offering along the lines of customer demand. But going down the stack from PaaS to IaaS seems like going after a cash cow (not to mention Microsoft’s rivals at Amazon Web Services), not market leadership.

We’ll have more details as they’re available, so stay tuned.