Zend Launches PHP SubscriptionZend Launches PHP Subscription

Zend Technologies launched a modified way of acquiring its PHP products, one that allows them to be deployed in either some predictable, set quantity or in a suddenly expanding number of instances for rapid scale-up in a cloud computing setting.

A remaining bugaboo of launching applications in the cloud is the need to calculate licensing, based on number of instances. Zend is seeking to enable the launch of any number of instances, without arousing licensing issues. It's answer is the Zend Unlimited Subscription.

An unlimited subscription allows a customer to use as many instances of the Zend product set as they choose. Any number of users may be involved in their use, in exchange for a $50,000 annual license, said Ran Gishri, VP of products and marketing, in an interview.

PHP is the popular scripting or "dynamic" language, frequently used for Web site and cluster-based applications. Zend makes Zend Studio, a leading PHP integrated development environment; Zend Server, a PHP Web application server; and Zend Server Cluster Manager for managing PHP applications in a cluster, are its commercial products behind its work on the PHP programming language, which remains open source code.

"The primary candidates for Unlimited Subscription are the applications for cloud -based deployments," he said. Without a new subscription or licensing model, some companies finding themselves required to buy liceneses to cover all the instances fired up in a peak load situation, even though they may only reach the peak load a few times a year, he added.

Zend has calculated that the time is right to offer a combined and unlimited license of its products because those companies seeking to place applications in either an on-premises or off-premises cloud are frequently building them in PHP. "One-third of the Web runs PHP," Gishri said.