Windows Azure customers anxious to learn what Microsoft has been hiding behind its back can finally exhale later this week in San Francisco.

One key piece of the Azure update is support for what Microsoft calls “Persistent Virtual Machine (VM) Roles,” which will let Windows Azure customers run legacy applications in VMs. That includes running Linux, sources said.

Another capability is a Web hosting framework codenamed “Antares” that will provide a fine granularity Web apps-hosting service aimed at customers who don’t see Azure as an economical platform for webpage hosting.

But will Microsoft be able to deliver those features sooner rather than later? Not in a single iteration, one source said. Instead of pulling off the “All singing, all dancing” vision Microsoft would like to promise, it’s more likely the company will need at least two iterations to achieve the basics.

Of course, now that the Windows 8 Release Preview is available there is sure to be a Windows Azure demo on tablets and mobile devices at the event.

Another key trend to watch for, sources said, is an increased focus on hybrid clouds.

Over the short to mid-term, Microsoft aims to achieve, “write once and run anywhere” capabilities for Windows Azure, if I can use the Java slogan. Customers want to be able to run their applications either in the data center or in the cloud, or as a hybrid of two interchangeably. And they want to be able to do so without rewriting any code or worrying about vendor lock-in.

The best way to do that seems simple enough — run applications on the same API on both platforms — Windows Azure and Windows Server 2012. That might not be as easy as it sounds, though.

Windows Azure numbers lower than Amazon

Just as important as what Microsoft says, however, is what Microsoft doesn’t say. That may be telling when it comes to judging the relative veracity and importance of plans and promises at the Meet Windows Azure event, which will be streamed.

Microsoft has been notably quiet about Windows Azure’s status for more than a year. That may be because sales of Windows Azure have been disappointing to date. Windows Azure has garnered fewer than 100,000 customers so far, according to the research firm Directions On Microsoft, based in Kirkland, Wash.

That’s quite lower than industry estimates for market leader Amazon Web Services.

In some respects, it’s the same struggle Microsoft has gone through before. How can the company and its products remain relevant in a computing universe that is constantly changing?

The event will likely resemble many previous Microsoft marketing splashes, with system integrators, application developers, resellers and other partners lined up to show solidarity for the company’s strategy du jour.

Again, when Thursday rolls around, remember to listen closely for what doesn’t get said as well as what does.

Stuart J. Johnston is Senior News Writer for SearchCloudComputing.com. Contact him at sjohnston@techtarget.com.

In case you missed seeing this video on YouTube (I recommend that you watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmrxN3GWHpM). In case you don’t have time, let me summarize the key points that I heard and give you my take.

In essence, with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle is hoping to put the right pieces in place to position itself as an equal to IBM in the IT market. Clearly, Oracle likes the software stack that Sun has built including ownership of Java and a lot of interesting distributed computing technology. And if we are talking about the cloud, Sun has a lot of good technology it picked up through various acquisitions. While many prognosticators assumed that Oracle would sell off Sun’s hardware assets, it is becoming clear that Oracle wants to make good use of Sun’s hardware. On some certain level, I think this is crazy since the hardware business has low margins and a complex business model. However, if you listen to Ellison’s talk it is clear why he wants to keep the hardware. He envisions a world where customers want to buy in a more straightforward way – no complex integrations, no piece parts from hundreds of different vendors.

Clearly, customers do want to have fewer vendors to deal with but it is not clear that they want 100 percent one-stop-shopping. It’s sort of like back to the good old days of computing in the 1970s – one mainframe, integrated applications, and simplified management.

What Oracle envisions is to be able to ship a system to its customers that comes bundled with everything including packaged applications, bundled with its database, middleware, — all the bells and whistles. It would be tuned and configured as a black box. The customer benefit would be that there would be no need for any integration of component parts. It would act like a complete system. There are clearly benefits to Oracle in being able to grab total share of wallet from the customer. For the customer there is benefit in not worry about so many moving parts.

The only thing that could possibly spoil the vision is cloud computing. Customers looking to a future of cloud computing would increasingly rely on software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service to meet many of their computing needs. Increasingly companies are looking to a new generation of applications that leave upgrading software to the SaaS provider.

Larry Ellison decries the cloud because it assumes that there is no middleware, hardware, chips, etc. But, of course, this is not true. There are lots and lots of hardware and chips but they are configured and used differently than Ellison’s vision. There are lots of middleware and business services that will be available to customers but it is offered in a new economic model that the cloud represents.

I think that Ellison is uncomfortable with the cloud because it could have an impact on Oracle’s vision of deeper control over the customer. In time, the cloud could also dramatically impact maintenance revenue.

Of course, the cloud won’t take over the world of computing in the short run. It will evolve over time until more and more computing is based on the cloud. The cloud will have a disruptive impact on the way everything from hardware, software and services is delivered. And if I had to bet on outcomes, Ellison will be plotting a comprehensive cloud strategy just in case.