The Open Road

Leave it to Zend to kick Java-loving Sun Microsystems when it's down.

PHP has become one of the hottest programming languages in technology, and the engine behind the little scripting language that could is Zend Technologies. Back in 2000 Zend released its Zend Framework to facilitate PHP development, and it's now taking this Java-bashing crusade a step further with the release of its new Zend Server, as The Register reports.

As Dave Rosenberg notes over on CNET's Software Interrupted blog, Zend Technologies is making available its Zend Server on Tuesday as both a commercial product and one free to the community for download. Why? Because such a move should further facilitate PHP adoption and give Zend a prime location to profit from that adoption.

Smart strategy. The new Zend Server can be easily integrated into any bundle, runs native to the operating system, and offers significant performance and management features. With the community version, the company says developers and admins can set up a complete PHP environment in minutes.

This is especially interesting for two reasons:

1. With the general availability of Zend Server, the company is obviously signaling that it's serious about run-time and extending its products beyond tools. In other words, it wants to make money. Lots of it. It's smart enough to know that there is a huge market opportunity to support PHP application development with a full production environment--from tools to run-time. And with both the company and a community of users supporting it, Zend can help PHP dominate in Web development.
2. The company is going to use the freeware model to accelerate adoption and then convert some of those users to paying customers and provide a foundation of access and support for which the open-source software model has blazed the trail. This model has worked for Red Hat, Zimbra, and others, and I suspect it will work for Zend, too.

This wraps up a really amazing decade for Zend Technologies and its recently appointed CEO, Andi Gutmans. And with big companies like Adobe Systems, Google, IBM and Microsoft using PHP or rumored to nearing full support for it, the next decade should be equally as productive.

In other words, life just became a wee bit harder for Sun. Just what it needed.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Talking with Microsoft officials last week, I was surprised to hear a key reason for the company getting involved with things like optimizing Windows for PHP: it was the only way to ensure products like PHP work with Microsoft technology at all.

Even as traffic is up to Microsoft's open-source code hosting site, CodePlex, and even as it starts to release code under standard open-source licenses like Apache and openly include open-source code in its products like Powerset, the open-source world seems to be closing off somewhat.

WordPress? Written for MySQL. PHP? Same. The list goes on.

While I'm glad to see a robust and growing open-source ecosystem, and while I recognize that some decisions like this are driven by technology and not any desire to omit support for proprietary databases and application servers, I'm not as glad to see one that replicates all that I dislike about proprietary ecosystems.

One of my chief complaints about Microsoft has been that it required the use of its other products to get the full experience. Like SharePoint? Well, you're going to also have to like Windows Server, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, etc., because it requires a host of other Microsoft software to function. Microsoft has traditionally tied products together to drive lock-in. Is open source doing the same?

But now Microsoft is changing this strategy, albeit slowly. The company is starting to modularize its stack because it recognizes that it must compete in a heterogeneous IT environment. That's what this work with PHP and other open-source systems is all about (though the risk remains that Microsoft is seeking to invite open source into the Borg, and not provide an exit).

Open source should be truly open. Some open-source projects and vendors get this. Red Hat? It works with a slew of proprietary applications. SugarCRM? Run it with just about any operating system, database, application server, etc., that you could wish. And so forth.

Open source is about choice, including the choice to run open source with closed complements. Yes, sometimes the lack of proprietary complement support is a matter of resources, not intention. But to the extent that we build projects that run only with other open-source projects, and intend them to only work with open-source components, we're acting like the proprietary ecosystems that we've been trying to overcome. We shouldn't pull a Microsoft. Or, given its seemingly new direction, maybe we should.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center used to make news by partnering with SugarCRM, MySQL, and other commercial open-source projects. Those partnerships seem to have hit a dry spell over the past two years, with little in the way of new announcements, but this doesn't mean that Microsoft's OSTC has been inactive.

Quite the contrary. As its work with the PHP community suggest, the OSTC has actually been in overdrive. In an interview with the PHP Classes blog, Microsoft gives some background as to the motivations behind its work with the scripting language:

Open-source initiatives at Microsoft are important to the open-source community because they give developers greater exposure for their products through access to a broadly adopted platform....The (open-source development and interoperability) initiatives are important because they break down barriers between proprietary and open-source developers allowing them to benefit from each other's work.

All of these points apply to the PHP community. In the past year, we've demonstrated significant performance improvements on Windows, making PHP applications more attractive to Windows customers. The (Internet Information Services) team created the FastCGI module to implement process persistence and better manage non-thread-safe applications. And the SQL Server team has created a PHP driver providing access to database services on Windows.

Microsoft engineers and contractors have made contributions to the PHP run-time engine and to PHP application projects. And communication between Microsoft; commercial open-source-based companies including Zend, OmniTI, and iBuildings; and open-source developers has broadened significantly.

In other words, both the PHP community and Microsoft benefit from this interoperability development.

However, what remains unsaid in this commentary is perhaps Microsoft's biggest benefit by tying into PHP: enhanced relevance in the Web world, in which it's trying to compete. The Web is largely built on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) stack today. For Microsoft to win on the Web, it must engage PHP, however much it might want the world to beat a path to its .Net door.

In a separate but related initiative, Microsoft's Silverlight is going head-to-head with Adobe Systems' Flash with Web design developers, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported.

But that's only part of the Web battle. Web scripting languages like PHP have been heavily influential in developing the Web, and today, PHP and its clan are largely hardwired for MySQL, not Microsoft's SQL Server.

Microsoft's OSTC is helping change this by engaging the PHP community. In discussions with various Microsoft executives, I've heard that this work is not fully appreciated (yet) within Microsoft, but I suspect that Microsoft will come to significantly appreciate the work that its OSTC has been doing for it, both within the PHP community and in other open-source communities.

John Donne wrote that "no man is an island, entire of itself," and the same holds true for Microsoft. It can no longer afford to be an isolated, monolithic development ecosystem, especially as it races to catch up with the competition on the Web.

I just saw the news that Zend has raised $7 million more, in its fifth (Series E) round of funding. Zend last raised $20 million in August 2006. Zend has raised so much money that it must be bought for a bazillion dollars for its investors to get a good return from it.

There are good reasons to raise money heading into a downturn: The justification noted in the press release is to use the funds "as needed." That sounds like "in case things go awry during a recessionary period." This is smart.

One of two things must have happened. Either Zend is struggling and this was a way to give it some runway, or Zend is doing fine but the new investor gave such a rich, (relatively) non-dilutive valuation that Zend couldn't help but take the money. I'm guessing the latter.

Even so, it's worrisome that Zend has needed to raise as much cash as it has. Yes, MySQL raised a ton of cash and saw a massive exit for its investors. But most exits - open source or not - will not see $1 billion for under $100 million in sales. It's best to raise as little money as possible, if you can.

Any comment from Zend?

Web scripting languages like PHP are hot, but it's Java and .Net that pay the bills, according to a new survey by Robert Half Technology's 2008 Salary Guide:

Next year, application developers and senior web developers skilled in Java, Java Enterprise Edition and Microsoft's C# and VisualBasic.NET look likely to have more leverage in salary negotiations and pull in more cash than those armed with Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP/Python (LAMP) or AJAX, according to a new salary survey.

IT employment specialist Robert Half Technology's 2008 Salary Guide found application and senior web developers versed in Java and Microsoft's languages can add another 10 to 12 per cent on top of the salary range for developers. Those skilled in LAMP and AJAX can add around five per cent.

Time to dump open-source scripting languages for the old world of Java and .Net? Nah. It just demonstrates that much of the enterprise world is still driven by these two programming languages, and likely will be for some time.

For today's 21st installment in the Open Source CEO Series, I decided to talk with the head of Zend Technologies, Harold Goldberg. PHP adoption has exploded - how does a company build a business around that adoption? In fact, today Zend also announced the availability of Zend Framework 1.0, with a vibrant development and documentation community surrounding it.

Harold joined Zend with an enviable pedigree in enterprise software. As I've said before, that can be a blessing and a curse. In Harold's case, it seems to have been a blessing. Let's hear why.

Name, position, and company of executive Harold Goldberg, CEO, Zend Technologies.

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