Zend Technologies Brings PHP to IBM's Small and Midsize Customers; System i Customers Can Use World's Most Popular Web Scripting Language to Create Modern Web Applications.

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, today announced that the world's most popular Web scripting language, PHP, will be ported to IBM's "all-in-one" System i business computing solution. This is a multi-year agreement to deliver Zend's PHP portfolio of products and solutions to i5/OS, the flagship operating system for IBM System i, providing customers with an integrated, open Web application deployment environment.

As a result of the agreement, System i customers and solution providers will be able to deploy innovative, new Web applications rapidly and cost-effectively or create Web front ends for existing applications written in RPG, C, C++ or Java(TM), making use of customer investments in applications and skills. At the same time, the PHP community will be introduced to the leading capabilities of System i including integration, reliability and low cost of ownership for application deployment.

Adding PHP capabilities for i5/OS will make available to System i customers more than 10,000 existing PHP-based components and applications. Developers can use these existing components and applications rather than writing their own. For example, many companies set up forums, blogs and other collaborative Web sites by downloading free PHP open source projects and customizing them to suit their needs.

The Jules Bordet Institute is a leading university hospital devoted to prevention, screening, patient care, research and education in cancer. A System i customer, the Institute is a recognized European Comprehensive Cancer Center with collaborations all over the world. "We're very excited about IBM's agreement with Zend, which gives us the ability to more rapidly develop Web applications, making us more agile and responsive to new business requirements," said Ranga Deshpande, Ph.D., ICT Director of the Jules Bordet Institute. "We also expect that the agreement will provide us access to a large, new application portfolio as well as promising, young talent to help us keep innovating our business."

PHP is the most widely used scripting language for Web applications with more than 21 million Internet domains using PHP (http://www.php.net/usage.php). The Tiobe Index ranks PHP after Java, C and C++ as the fourth most popular programming language in the world (http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm).

"We are committed to helping our System i customers and solution providers innovate their businesses easily and cost-effectively," said Elaine Lennox, vice president of System i marketing at IBM. "Our agreement with Zend to deliver native support for PHP on the System i platform will help our customers quickly adapt to new challenges and opportunities while leveraging their current investments and assets."

Included in the agreement are Zend Core(TM) for i5/OS, Zend Studio(TM) for i5/OS, Zend Guard(TM) and Zend Platform(TM) for i5/OS. The products are planned to be available for use later in 2006.

--Zend Core for i5/OS is a tested and enhanced version of the open source PHP language. It delivers a seamless out-of-the-box experience by bundling all necessary drivers and third-party libraries to work with i5/OS and DB2 UDB. Customers can download an Early Access version of Zend Core for i5/OS today at https://www.zend.com/products/zend_core.

--Zend Studio for i5/OS is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for professional developers, encompassing all development components needed for the full PHP application lifecycle. An evaluation version is available today at http://www.zend.com/products/zend_studio.

--Zend Guard provides independent software vendors and IT managers with the ability to safely distribute and manage the distribution of their PHP applications while protecting their source code. Zend Guard is comprised of two key components, Zend Guard's encoder/obfuscator and Zend Guard's license manager. More information about Zend Guard is available at http://www.zend.com/products/zend_guard.

--Zend Platform for i5/OS is a robust PHP production environment, including performance, availability, clustering and monitoring capabilities for business-critical PHP applications. More information about Zend Platform is available at http://www.zend.com/products/zend_platform.

About Zend Technologies

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-two 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.

About the IBM System i(TM)

The IBM System i is a tightly integrated business system including hardware, middleware, storage and security. The "all-in-one" System i platform embraces open standards and can run i5/OS, Windows(1), Linux and AIX 5L operating environments simultaneously so clients can simplify their IT environment and reinvest those savings in business innovation. Business partners and solutions providers of all sizes drive System i5 success by building, selling and deploying more than 7,000 of the world's most popular business applications for their clients on the System i family. For more information, please visit http://www.ibm.com/systemi.

Footnotes:

1) The System i5 platform can run Microsoft Windows via an integrated Intel-based server option.

The following are either trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both: IBM, the IBM e-business logo, System i, and System i5. For a list of additional IBM trademarks, please see www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.