Zend Platform bolsters deployments of commercial applications on PHP, Mark de Visser, Zend chief marketing officer, said. New in this version is its availability in three different editions. Versions are offered for smaller organizations, for integrating with Java, and for enterprise-level users.

Zend Platform features such capabilities as message-queuing, de Visser said. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies have PHP initiatives, he said. "It's a sizable market opportunity for us," he said.

Zend Platform fills a niche for enterprise-level PHP users, Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst at RedMonk, said. The product provides performance, caching, and reliability, he said.

"It brings many of the same benefits that [Java] application servers bring to the Java world to the PHP world," O'Grady said.

PHP has gotten the nod over Java in some installations because it offers developer productivity and is suitable for SOA, de Visser said. "The scripting languages just lend themselves [to] that," he said.