Zend has finally released a press release (officially) about their latest certification offering - the Zend PHP5 Certification.

Here's a bit from the official press release (the full content is here):

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, today announced the availability of Zend PHP Certification for PHP 5, enabling developers to test and certify their expertise in new areas such as object oriented PHP programming, creating and using web-services with PHP, as well as PHP security.

Zend PHP 5 Certification was the result of extensive communication with the Zend Certified Engineer community to determine how the program can be most useful for PHP developers. Some of the community's top domain experts have contributed certification questions and reviewed the program to ensure that it is complete and tests for relevant skills. Becoming a Zend Certified Engineer gives developers an edge in today's competitive technology market. Certification also helps enterprise management quickly qualify new hires, and keep current development teams knowledgeable about the latest technology.

They've also announced that they will be offering the certification and classes to help developers prepare for it at the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo happening in October/November.