Over the past year, Zend and IBM have worked together to make Zend's popular PHP products available for V5R3 and V5R4 versions of i5/OS. Zend Core for i5/OS is a fully tested and enhanced version of open source PHP; Zend Platform for i5/OS is a PHP production environment that improves application management and performance; and Zend Studio for i5/OS is a PHP Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that includes all of the components necessary to support the lifecycle of PHP applications created on i5/OS.

Mark Shearer, general manager IBM System i also notes that one of the goals of the cooperative effort was one they've met successfully so far - to bring tools to System i users to allow them to quickly and easily develop applications in their environment.

The article also includes a small list of companies already using this technology including Parts Depot, MedDirect and HarrisData.