Zend Technologies Delivers PHP to IBM's System i Customers

CGIDir
Tuesday, August 15, 2006; 07:07 AM

Zend Technologies, Inc., a leding PHP development company, announced an important milestone in the company's multi-year agreement with IBM to deliver PHP to the "all-in-one" System i business computing solution. The immediate availability of Zend Core for i5/OS and Zend Studio Professional for i5/OS provides an integrated, open Web application development environment with native support for the world's most popular Web scripting language, PHP, and i5/OS, the flagship operating system for IBM System i.

System i customers have shown great interest in PHP during the beta test phase, with thousands of System i customers and solutions providers downloading the beta releases. Using Zend Core for i5/OS and Zend Studio Professional for i5/OS, System i customers and solutions providers can develop innovative, new Web applications rapidly and cost-effectively or create Web front ends for existing applications written in RPG, C, C++ or Java(TM). Zend Core for i5/OS will include a toolkit that enables PHP applications to easily access the integrated DB2 database and other resources in i5/OS.

The addition of PHP capabilities for i5/OS provides System i customers with access to more than 10,000 existing PHP-based components and applications which developers can use instead of writing their own. For example, many companies set up forums, wikis, blogs and other collaborative Web sites by downloading open source PHP applications and customizing them to suit their needs.

A prime example of this trend is the community web site at i5php.net, where users can find information about application development, trends and techniques, along with interactive forums. "PHP support on i5/OS provides more freedom of choice in Web development, along with protecting our current investments and assets," said Rob Ward, webmaster, i5php.net. "The low learning curve and high adoption rate combine to create tremendous momentum and interest in the System i community."

PHP is one of the most popular Web development languages. More than 22 million Internet domains deploy PHP, supported by a robust community of approximately 4.5 million PHP developers. PHP's popularity has accelerated rapidly due to its flexibility and ease of use and is implemented in everything from the simplest web forms to some of the most trafficked and complex sites on the Internet.

"We are committed to helping our System i customers and solution providers deliver innovation in their businesses easily and cost-effectively," said Mark Shearer, general manager, IBM System i. "Zend's delivery of native support for PHP on the System i platform will make available thousands of existing PHP-based applications and open up a pool of millions of skilled Web developers for use by System i clients."