At today’s Meet Windows Azure webcast, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie expanded significantly on yesterday’s major Windows Azure platform improvements, including persistent virtual machine support – and while the technical details are definitely interesting, the real news is Microsoft’s newfound dedication to eliminating cloud vendor lock-in and platform dependence as it promotes openness and developer partnerships. It’s a second lease on life for Microsoft’s cloud platform play.

It’s something I already discussed a little bit earlier today, when talking about AppFog and Apprenda’s newfound partnerships with Microsoft and Windows Azure. But early in the presentation, Guthrie highlighted the new Azure management portal.

Not only is the portal no longer built on the much-denigrated Microsoft Silverlight (meaning it also works on mobile devices, including the Apple iPad), but it actually enables import/export of virtual hard drive (VHD)-based virtual machines, meaning that any developer can take any VM out of Azure at any time and bring it to any other cloud provider they’d like (not to mention the ability to upload a VM from the data center at will).And as a nice side-bonus, any uploaded VMs are apparently stored in Azure Storage, meaning it’s geo-replicated across regions three times for high availability.

This openness has actually attracted popular cloud management solution provider RightScale, whose CEO Michael Crandell took the stage to announce that his company is bringing its solution to Azure (currently in private beta). As Windows Azure hypes its newfound hybrid cloud enablement, RightScale can provide an important management layer, while simultaneously allowing for auto-scaling of virtual machines, which has long been a weakness of the Azure platform.

Guthrie also used the event to go into depth on Windows Azure Web Sites – which, it turns out, is itself the project originally code-named Antares – a new framework to quickly and easily deploy web sites and applications in Node.js, PHP or ASP.NET.

In a live demo, Web Sites was used to launch a blog, hosted on Windows Azure, without writing a single line of code. There’s an option to move your application from a shared environment into a dedicated environment in real-time. And Guthrie also announced that every Azure user gets ten sites for free, so there’s certainly a price advantage there.

That’s not all: CVP of Windows Azure Scott Gu also announced new, managed application building block services including MySQL-as-a-service for Azure developers. Oh, and SQL Azure is now known as Windows Azure SQL Database. These services can be called from within a VM, from an Azure Web Site – from anywhere in the Azure ecosystem, really. It also adds an in-memory cache with a no-touch install, Gu promises. There’s also a new identity service that integrates with behind-the-firewall Active Directory, which is like the Facebook Open Graph, but for the enterprise, as Gu puts it. There’s also tighter Visual Studio 12 support, a media streaming service, and more.

Judging by the #MeetAzure tag on Twitter, these announcements are being met with huge waves of enthusiasm, only exacerbated by the fact that most of the demoing was done on Guthrie’s Apple Macbook, just underlining Microsoft’s newfound enthusiasm for playing nice with others.

“FFS Microsoft! YOUR [sic] DOING IT RIGHT!” tweeted self-described .NET nut Dean McDonnell, which was a sentiment echoed by many, though perhaps with fewer exclamation points.

I’m sure I’m leaving some stuff out. But at least until the inevitable backlash, it really seems like Microsoft is listening to what developers want. It’s not exactly a comeback, but perception creates reality, and Microsoft Windows Azure has moved from the underdog in the cloud arena into a real thought leader with a unique value proposition, and a threat to Amazon Web Services. Rest assured, Windows Azure is going to be on our minds, so keep watching SiliconAngle for more thoughts on the service’s rebirth.