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 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.

Users of System i boxes are interested in Web-enabling their applications such as CRM and ERP systems, said Mark de Visser, Zend Technologies chief marketing officer.

"Instead of people having to talk to operators, they can now [use] self-service," via a Web interface, de Visser said.

"The combination of PHP and [System i] is a logical one," Stephen O'Grady, senior analyst at RedMonk, said in an e-mail. "Just as [System i] has traditionally, PHP is focused on the low-cost, simply implemented solutions. By helping to bring PHP to [System i], Zend's also opened up a sizable market in medium-sized businesses everywhere to dynamic language developers."