Great Bridge Partners With Zend Technologies to Offer PostgreSQL-PHP Strategy for Web-Based Business.

Busienss/Technology Editors

NORFOLK, Va. and NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 26, 2001

Open source database experts forge alliance in key programming

technology with leading commercial provider

Great Bridge LLC and Zend Technologies have joined forces to more fully integrate the PostgreSQL database and the PHP server-side scripting language, providing Web developers with the most powerful open-source products available for building dynamic, database-driven Web sites. The partnership between Great Bridge, the leading commercial distributor of the PostgreSQL database, and Zend, an internationally established provider of commercial solutions to enhance performance and productivity of PHP's installed base, bundles two scalable, feature-rich applications and offers enterprises a formidable combination for powering their Web-based applications.

Great Bridge provides expert-level professional services and technical support for PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open-source database. Zend Technologies develops and markets value-added products and services for enterprise users and developers of PHP technology, and is a major contributor to the PHP development effort. More than 2.5 million sites actively support PHP, according to a monthly survey by Internet research firm Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com). Corporations that use PHP include Cisco, AltaVista, Unilever, Maxinvest, AuctionWatch, VillageVoice, BMC, Lufthansa, PC Magazine Germany and Wall Street Online Germany.

"PHP is a key technology for developing robust Web-based applications for the enterprise, while the PostgreSQL database management system provides performance and functionality equivalent to leading proprietary databases," said Robert Gilbert, Great Bridge president and CEO. "By providing a high level of integration between the two, this partnership places powerful solutions in developers' hands for building e-commerce and other Web-based applications for business."

The Great Bridge/Zend partnership allows both companies' customers to benefit from a broader range of products and services. Zend's suite of value-added PHP products for developers and enterprise-class Web installations includes the Zend Integrated Development Environment (IDE); the Zend Cache, which dramatically improves site performance and reduces hardware requirements; the Zend Encoder Unlimited, which enables businesses to protect their PHP source code; and customized consulting services. Great Bridge offers its enhanced, quality-tested version of PostgreSQL, as well as engineering-level services for developers and production environments, including developer-to-developer support, consulting services and professional support contracts ranging up to 24x7x365 for mission-critical database applications.

"PHP has made substantial inroads into the enterprise; we've seen this through the demand for Zend products since our successful online launch of the Zend store this past January," says Zend CEO and President Doron Gerstel. "We believe that combining Zend's value-added offerings with Great Bridge's backing of PostgreSQL will provide quality-assured, ready-to-roll solutions that will enable faster development and time to market."

Future releases of the Great Bridge PostgreSQL database will include a fully integrated installation of PHP from Zend Technologies, and other key Web technologies certified by Great Bridge's Quality Assurance Laboratory. Great Bridge and Zend will also strive to increase collaboration between the open source PostgreSQL and PHP development projects, as well as integrate other future product and service offerings.

Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, the co-founders of Zend Technologies, are members of the eight-member PHP steering group. Zend Technologies developed the `kernel' of PHP 4.0, Zend Engine, the component that enables users to understand and execute the code. The company designed the new modular structure of PHP 4.0, which makes it highly stable and extensible, and paved the way for PHP's use as an integral server module in Web servers other than Apache. Among their other major contributions to PHP is the design and implementation of PHP to many of the most popular databases, including PostgreSQL.

About Great Bridge

Great Bridge LLC provides open source solutions powered by PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database. Great Bridge delivers value-added open source software and support services based on PostgreSQL, empowering e-business builders with an enterprise-class database and tools at a fraction of the cost of closed, proprietary alternatives.

Headquartered in Norfolk, VA, Great Bridge is a privately held company funded by Landmark Communications, Inc., the media company that also owns The Weather Channel, weather.com, and national and international interests in newspapers, broadcasting, electronic publishing and interactive media.

About Zend Technologies

Zend Technologies, headquartered in Ramat Gan, Israel, develops and markets Internet infrastructure software. In addition to offering value-added products and services for Web application development, Zend remains committed to the advancement and proliferation of PHP as a freeware, open-source scripting language. In this role, the company offers expertise and technical backing to the PHP open-source community.

PHP is used to develop dynamic Web pages for e-commerce and other Web applications. PHP applications run on 40 percent of Web servers running Apache software, making it the most popular development platform for Apache servers. PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language (freely downloadable from php.net and zend.com) that offers a simple, universal solution for easy-to-program dynamic Web pages -- pages that interact with the user, so that each user visiting the page sees customized information.