Zend hails PHP for Microsoft, IBM

03.11.2006

Gutmans: Yes.

InfoWorld: What's happening with that?

Gutmans: What's happening there is about five years ago IBM ported J2EE over to System i in order to re-energize the platform, Web enable it. And that was very unsuccessful because it was very hard for COBOL and RPG developers to adopt Java. It's just too complicated. And so they are getting behind PHP now because they see that as being the real solution to Web-enabling the platform, getting those developers moved over. So we announced, I think it was in March, we announced a multi-[year], multi-million dollar OEM deal with IBM. And they're shipping Zend Core and Zend Studio to their customers for free as part of that OEM deal. Right now it looks extremely promising. I mean it really seems their community is extremely enthusiastic and receptive of PHP. And we're seeing some of the biggest System i users looking to adopt PHP.

InfoWorld: Who is your competitor in the PHP space?

Gutmans: We don't really have a competitor right now. It's like we don't have one competitor really that has a solution like us. There are all sorts of little shops that do all sorts of things.