php|architect has a new posting about the latest announcement to come from the IBM and PHP collaboration - the Zend Core for IBM.

The official announcement from Zend and IBM about the new Zend Core product we reported on earlied in the day is finally out. Zend Core for IBM is a complete, certified and fully supported distribution of PHP 5 that tightly integrates with IBM's DB2 and CloudScape products, in addition to bundling all required third-party libraries for interaction with the outside world.

The product includes such features as security updates, GUI-based management, granular control over configuration parameters and compatibility with Zend's other products, including Zend Platform.

Zend Core will be available as a free download from both IBM's and Zend's websites in the second quarter of 2005. Support programs and Sevice Level Agreements will also be available for commercial clients in a variety of different configurations.

For more information, read the IBM press release or visit the Zend Core for IBM site.

While it's great to see that larger companies are getting behind PHP like this, it seems to me that this implementation is still somewhat "exclusive" in its target audience...