In a news release from InfoWorld today, there's information on the work that Zend and IBM are doing to bring PHP to IBM's System i computers (formerly the iSeries or AS/400s).

Development products featured as part of an agreement between IBM and Zend include Zend Core for the i5/OS; which will be Zend's PHP implementation for System i; Zend Studio for i5/OS development tools, and Zend Platform (Overview, Articles, Company) for i5/OS, which features tools for operating Web sites.

The goal of the effort is to enable development of Web applications for deployment on System i computers. PHP is a widely used scripting language for Web applications.

According to the release, the marriage of PHP and the System i machines, both popular among budget-minded individuals, will "open up a sizable market" for smaller clients.