Rumor: Zend for sale, with IBM a likely buyer?
TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld notes that Zend's recent layoff of 25 percent of its R&D team could be a prelude to an acquisition. Schonfeld suggests Oracle and Microsoft as potential suitors, but I think Sean Michael Kerner's speculation (IBM) rings true.
Regardless, Zend would be a great prize. I'm not privy to the company's financial information but don't need to be to believe that Zend's position vis-a-vis PHP (the primary "P" in the LAMP stack) makes it a prime target. It's surprising that no one has picked it up by now.
My sources tell me that Oracle was very close to purchasing Zend back in 2006, but that the two sides were far apart on valuation. With open-source software companies going for a premium these days, Zend's price will have only gone up since 2006.
Who do you think is most likely to buy Zend?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
- by dskarjune May 28, 2008 10:51 AM PDT
- I was just at php|tek in Chicago last week. Andy Gutmans did not discuss the layoffs in his keynote. In a casual conversation, he was reticent to comment on the Sun acquisition of MySQL . Core members of the PHP community politely endorse the Zend framework, but they criticize Zend for trying to move partner code into the base. An acquisition by IBM would be advantageous as they have supported PHP with excellent documentation and 'get' the methodology of the community. A marriage in Javaland would be shotgun. As for Oracle, it's just a poker game.
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