Zend Announces Zend Guard 4 - New version improves distribution and code protection for PHP applications

April 18, 2006; 05:20 AM
Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, today announced Zend Guard™ 4, which allows independent software vendors, developers and businesses to protect their intellectual property in PHP code. Zend Guard 4 offers an unprecedented level of code protection and a complete license management solution for the distribution of PHP applications. Zend improved the Guard product line to minimize the risk of reverse engineering by increasing protection during the encoding phase.
Companies like Arquila, which focuses on providing small and medium sized companies with business management software, have already deployed Zend Guard. “Zend Guard enables us to deploy our solution while retaining protection on our intellectual property,” said Brent Robinson, technical director at Arquila.

Zend Guard 4 is comprised of two key components, the Zend Guard encoder and the Zend Guard license manager which enables the protection and mass distribution of commercial PHP applications. Licenses can be easily modified or renewed, without deploying new software. Developers can pick-and-choose from a variety of flexible licensing models such as concurrent users, time limited, segment of network, or server specific.

"Developers need the strongest, easiest-to-use and most flexible tools to protect their code," said Doron Gerstel, president and CEO of Zend Technologies, “With Zend Guard, they get the horsepower to protect their intellectual property and their revenue.”

The new easier-to-use interface includes new wizards to help programmers encode PHP applications and manage licensing more efficiently and transparently, while maintaining optimal application performance. The new version also supports PHP 5.1.