IBM Puts Zend PHP stack on System i

Zend Technologies, which refers to itself as the PHP company, announced on the 5th Feb. that it is “teaming with IBM to preload Zend’s Web stack with every shipment of IBM i software, the integrated operating environment for IBM Power Systems, including all hardware that ships with IBM i.”

Zend continued in a news release, “Zend’s PHP-based Web solution stack lets customers Web enable IBM i assets and includes support on IBM i for rapid application development and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).” With PHP, IBM i users also gain access to the ecosystem of PHP applications and the professional developer community Zend has helped garner, the company said.

“PHP is the most popular Web development language due to its ease of use and enterprise-grade functionality,” IBM officials said. “More than 22 million Internet domains deploy PHP, including Yahoo and Facebook.” The PHP developer community is estimated to consist of about 5 million developers and the PHP application ecosystem features key applications such as the popular Drupal open-source content management system.

In 2005, IBM and PHP announced Zend Core for IBM, for PHP-based databasese.

“More than 12,000 IBM i customers from 150 countries have obtained Zend products for IBM I … [With Zend Core] now bundled with the IBM i operating environment, IBM customers now enjoy an out-of-the-box experience with PHP on both the IBM i 5.4 and IBM i 6.1 implementations,” Zend said in the release.