Zend

Zend by Perforce provides enterprise-grade solutions for organizations utilizing PHP, a widely-used open-source scripting language. The company's business is centered on supporting the development, deployment, and management of web and mobile applications built with PHP, catering primarily to enterprise clients, including Fortune 100 companies. Revenue is generated through a suite of commercial products and services, including secure, fully supported PHP runtimes, software infrastructure, and professional services such as long-term support for various PHP versions.

The company's origins are deeply intertwined with the history of PHP itself. In 1997, students Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, rewrote the parser for an early version of PHP, creating PHP 3. Their collaboration continued, and in 1999 they developed the Zend Engine, which became the core of PHP 4, significantly enhancing its performance and capabilities. This foundational work led them to formally establish Zend Technologies in 1999 to offer commercial support and tools for the growing number of businesses adopting PHP. The name "Zend" is a portmanteau of the founders' first names, Zeev and Andi.

Zend's product portfolio is designed to address critical aspects of the application lifecycle. Key offerings include ZendPHP, a secure and supported PHP runtime, and ZendHQ, which provides monitoring and root-cause analysis to optimize application performance. The company also offers Zend Server, a web application server for running and managing PHP applications, which includes tools for debugging, caching, and monitoring. For clients with legacy systems, such as IBM i, Zend provides solutions to modernize applications using PHP. The business model combines product licensing with a range of professional services, including technical support, migration assistance, and consulting.

The company has undergone significant structural changes. In October 2015, Zend Technologies was acquired by Rogue Wave Software. Subsequently, in 2019, Perforce Software acquired Rogue Wave, bringing Zend into its portfolio of DevOps solutions, where it now operates as Zend by Perforce.

Keywords: enterprise PHP, PHP support, Zend Server, ZendPHP, Andi Gutmans, Zeev Suraski, PHP development, application modernization, web application server, PHP runtimes, DevOps, Perforce, ZendHQ, PHP security, long-term support, application monitoring, PHP consulting, Zend Engine, IBM i modernization, PHP deployment