Zend, "the PHP Company," has announced enhancements across its line of PHP development and deployment products, strengthening interoperability between the Web language and IBM i (i5/OS) operating system. The company recently showcased its new products for the IBM i community at COMMON in Nashville and provided support for several of the 15 PHP-related sessions hosted there.

The Zend IBM i products are a result of the company's multi-year collaboration with IBM to provide i customers with solutions to support them throughout the application development lifecycle. To date, more than 10,000 users have downloaded one or more products included in the Zend i5/OS suite.

"For the past two years we have been working with Zend to help i5/OS (IBM i) customers develop and deploy new Web applications that leverage their RPG applications and DB2 data," said Craig Johnson, IBM Power Systems product manager for PHP on IBM i. "With the Zend offerings on IBM i, our customers are benefiting from the breadth of skills, open community applications, and ecosystem that surrounds PHP."

Zend products have been enhanced to deliver tighter integration with IBM products. Zend development and deployment products for IBM i allow customers to consolidate PHP applications running on multiple platforms onto the IBM i operating system, create new applications that leverage IBM i data, and deploy any of the thousands of open source applications available, the company noted.

Recent announcements include:

·       General Availability of Zend Core 2.5.2 for IBM i, a fully tested and enhanced version of open source PHP. Version 2.5.2 includes an updated PHP engine, increased PHP script performance, and a Windows-based installation option.

·       General Availability of Zend Platform 3.6 for IBM i, a PHP production environment that improves application management and performance. Version 3.6 updates include increased PHP application performance and a new integration feature called Zend 5250 Bridge (a PHP-based API for running interactive (5250) applications through a browser).

·       Zend JumpStart for IBM i Service is a fast-paced consulting engagement designed to help an enterprise extend the reach of its i5 environment, resulting in the creation of a fully operational proof of concept ready for deployment on IBM i.

·       Zend Studio for Eclipse - IBM i edition is a PHP integrated development environment (IDE) that includes all of the components necessary to support the lifecycle of PHP applications created on IBM i. This edition will be compatible with IBM Rational on Zend Studio Eclipse 3.4, and will be released in the third quarter of this year.

"We are pleased to continue and deepen our collaboration with IBM to benefit and support i5/OS (IBM i) users. We recognize that PHP plays a vital role for businesses running i5/OS by allowing them to leverage and extend their IBM i investments," said Andi Gutmans, co-founder and CTO of Zend.

Zend/IBM PHP Innovation Award Winner

Zend and IBM also announced the winner of the first Zend/IBM PHP Innovation Award, API Group. The award was designed to recognize excellence in production of PHP applications among IBM i users, with applications being judged on overall value, benefit to the PHP community, complexity, and concept. API Group is using PHP to Web enable their entire ERP system, saving millions of dollars. Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., the API Group is a family of companies whose members provide services in five areas: specialty construction, distribution, fabrication-manufacturing, fire protection and systems.

About Zend

Zend Technologies, Inc., "the PHP Company," is a leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying, and managing business-critical PHP applications. PHP is used by more than 20 million Web sites and has quickly become the most popular language for building dynamic Web applications. Deployed at more than 15,000 companies worldwide, Zend's family of products provides a comprehensive platform for supporting the entire lifecycle of PHP applications. Zend is headquartered in Cupertino, Calif. For more information, visit http://www.zend.com/, or call 1-408-253-8800.