Coalition of Corporate and Community Support Gets Behind Open Source PHP Framework.

New Zend Framework Helps Speed Up Web Application Development

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the availability of version 1.0 of Zend Framework, an open source application framework for PHP. First announced at the annual Zend Conference in October 2005 and pre-released in April 2006, Zend Framework has attracted contributions from 230 active contributors, both individual developers and company-sponsored committers, including from Google, IBM and Zend Technologies. Pre-release versions of Zend Framework have been downloaded more than one million times. It can be downloaded today from http://framework.zend.com.

"The goal of Zend Framework is to provide a high-quality open-source framework for developing Web applications and Web services," says Andi Gutmans, co-CTO and co-founder at Zend Technologies. "The framework delivers value to projects of any scope, from personal Weblogs to integrated corporate ecommerce systems. Consistent with the spirit of PHP, Zend Framework delivers easy-to-use and powerful functionality, and focuses on the challenges of building robust and modern Web applications."

IBM's cutting edge QEDWiki, which allows line of business professionals to assemble mash-ups from disparate sources on demand, uses the Zend Framework as one of its core frameworks for Ajax and Web Services support. "From the start we have embraced and contributed to the Zend Framework project, and are pleased to work with the new Framework 1.0," says David Boloker, CTO for Emerging Internet Technologies, IBM Software Group.

Right Media, a leader in online advertising, operates the Right Media Exchange, in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online ad placements in real time through auctions, with Right Media's optimization technology predicting where the ads will work best. "Last year, when we investigated what PHP framework to use to create a service portal for our 19,000 advertisers and publishers, we chose Zend Framework because we were convinced that with Zend's backing this project would deliver the most value of all PHP frameworks," says Ed Kozek, Vice President of Product Engineering at Right Media. "We are very happy with the outcome, we delivered the portal in 6 months and our traffic and customer satisfaction rates have soared as a result."

Zend Framework is very easy to adopt for commercial purposes:

-- All contributors to the framework have submitted their code under
   an Apache-style contributor license agreement (CLA), so that
   companies can deploy Zend Framework based applications without
   concern for IP violations.

-- Zend Framework is released under a BSD license, which enables users
   to include the framework code in their own Web applications without
   any constraints on use.

-- The "use-at-will" architecture means that users can gradually adopt
   Zend Framework and use as much or as little of its functions as
   their applications require, avoiding the lock-in from the
   "all-or-nothing" architecture of other frameworks.

"The nature of application development in the enterprise is changing fast," says Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. "IT departments need ways to provide functional departments the means to quickly cobble together Web services and inject needed data into business processes. A mature API set and framework approach to PHP, such as Zend Framework, allows IT to maintain control and reduce risk -- while also expanding the participants in and reach of development. The goal is to extend IT assets in a way that helps businesses change and adapt quickly."

"StrikeIron delivers a robust set of high-quality, reliable and trusted Web services that provide real-time access to a diverse set of data sources and functionality over the Web," says Bob Brauer, CEO at StrikeIron. "We have created a StrikeIron API in Zend Framework because of its Web services consumption capabilities and the momentum it is experiencing as a platform for developing Web applications. Providing a Zend-ready interface will make it extremely easy for PHP developers to access multiple StrikeIron services in a consistent way, greatly extending the capabilities of Web applications that utilize Zend Framework."

Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices and a lightweight architecture that enables faster development of reliable and highly interactive Web applications. Its components include:

-- MVC application framework - Zend Framework's model-view-controller
   architecture enables the separation of business logic from user
   interface design, providing an industry best practice for Web
   application development. The framework also makes AJAX programming
   easier with JSON support.

-- Database support - access multiple brands of RDBMS via a database-
   independent object-oriented interface. Databases supported include
   IBM DB2, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL and
   SQLite.

-- Internationalization - Zend Framework supports advanced yet simple
   solutions to develop your PHP 5 Web applications for a global
   audience.

-- Web services - use convenient classes to publish and consume Web
   services and feeds in PHP.

    -- Feeds: ATOM, RSS, Google data APIs

    -- Clients and Servers: REST, HTTP, XML-RPC

    -- Services: Integrate a multitude of industry Web services,
       including APIs from major providers like Amazon, Yahoo!, and
       StrikeIron.

-- Foundation Framework services - Zend Framework provides many other
   classes to make common application development tasks quick and
   easy. For example, solutions for email, sessions, authentication,
   logging, caching, filtering input, and others are included.

About Zend

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