As mentioned by Ivo Jansch, Andi Gutmans (of Zend) responded to the recent speculation about a buyout of the company in his keynote address at this year's php|tek conference:

Andi explained the reason: they want to become cashflow positive, in order to remain independent. The news should be interpreted in a positive way, the future now looks bright, Zend products will not be affected and life goes on. An acquisition of Zend is not happening in the near future.

TechCrunch had suggested that the recent large amounts of layoffs could have been in an effort to ready the company for a buy out from one of many proposed major players.

According to a new press release today, Turbolinux has announced their partnership with Zend Japan, Ltd. to further "Internet Linux Deployment in the Asian markets" (through the purchase of a 90% share of their stock).

Under the terms of the contract negotiations concluded on March 30, Turbolinux acquired a ninety percent share (1,170 shares) of Zend Japan Ltd. from Open Source Japan, Ltd. Zend Japan will continue to serve as the exclusive distributor of Zend web application platform products in Japan.

"With Turbolinux, Zend Japan will closely plan and promote Turbolinux and Zend/PHP products and solutions and will be able to provide them in a comprehensive and stable format. In this dynamic alliance with Turbolinux and Zend Technologies, Zend Japan will offer products and service which cover the needs of Japanese market," added Mr. Suzuki.

Turbolinux will be using their sales and distribution channels to help further the reach of theirs and Zend's technologies. The negotiations for the whole deal were completed back on March 30th, but nothing was revealed until April 5th.

On his blog today, Pierre has an interesting post that has details on some of the Oracle acquisition plans - some of which might include Zend.

There is rumours relayed by The Register about Oracle acquisitions plan, it is a quite surprising to see Zend in the list. Note that the text is not clear, but whether it is true or not, the scenario is interesting enough to think about the impacts in the PHP world.

He also comments on the "creator of PHP" tagline that Zend uses quite a bit, and how, if it were moved over to Oracle, would be "an insult".