What Zend is Missing

It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that PHP is building some serious corporate praise with companies like Oracle, IBM and now Microsoft introducing efforts to support PHP in some form or fashion. While this may sound like great news for Zend, it’s not all roses. Why?

From time-to-time IBM comes to Iowa and in the meetings I’ve been involved with you don’t hear them trying to market their new-found PHP competencies. Instead you’ll hear a lot of questions about Java, how they can help us with the Java products we own and how we might make use of their expertise in Java. In fact, I have yet to hear the famed acronym "PHP" come out of the mouth of an IBM representative here on the job…all this despite knowing we do develop a considerable number of applications in PHP. That’s a far cry different than the spin they gave at the Zend/PHP Conference. There, of course, IBM was PHP’s best friend and PHP and IBM are a matched made in heaven. C’mon, we all know why…Java is their bread-and-butter. IBM, Oracle, et al. have invested far too much into Java to just cut and run. Same can be said for Microsoft with regards to .NET. This isn’t criticism on them, I actually agree that having a plan for PHP is a clear benefit for those companies. But the job of selling PHP to businesses has to lay squarely on the shoulders of Zend.

I made it very clear to a number of Zend representatives that there isn’t a better cash-cow for them than government. Let’s face it, as long as we keep paying taxes the various levels of government will have money to spend on IT. What’s more, government is always looking for ways to cut costs and, from my perspective, there isn’t a level of government in the nation that couldn’t save money by adopting PHP in some form or fashion. So why is PHP the black-sheep in government IT? Because no notable PHP advocates are talking to the CIO’s in government about what PHP has to offer. My manager and his boss, the CIO, are notable exceptions which is why I am quite happy to work where I do. So now the million dollar question.

When is Zend going to form a strategy for selling PHP to government?

It’s a shame they don’t have anybody in their organization with that task as their sole responsibility. In fact, I’d argue that while I appreciate and understand their involvement with a number of foreign contracts, that just as good opportunities lie here right under their nose. Don’t get me wrong, I know France’s adoption of PHP is a great success story as far as government involvement goes. But they need to build on that, forge the relationships with government because, frankly, Java is winning that battle and not because of it’s innovation, ease of use and cheap price point (note the sarcasm). Rather, Java is winning the battle within government because people are selling Java to government. Government IT managers would be willing to listen to Zend but they’ve got to at least show up to the table.

So to Zend, a company I feel that is on the right path…I hope to see you more engaged in the public sector this coming year. I’ll try my best to post a follow-up to this in ’07 to see how things have progressed!