Zend and Microsoft Announce Strategic Partnership for Microsoft Azure

Focus on Accelerating Developer Cloud Adoption for WordPress, Drupal and PHP Applications

CUPERTINO, CA and REDMOND, WA, April 15, 2015 -- Zend, the PHP Company, and Microsoft Corp. today announced a strategic partnership aimed at transforming developers’ productivity in the cloud starting with a joint integrated offering of Zend’s transformative Z-Ray technology with Microsoft’s Azure App Service. (Click to tweet)

The combination of Z-Ray and Azure App Service delivers supreme productivity and insight to both PHP developers and developers of PHP-based applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and Joomla.

“We are excited that Microsoft selected our innovative Z-Ray technology as a key differentiator to their cloud offering," said Andi Gutmans, CEO & Co-founder of Zend. "We are very impressed to see how Microsoft is able to increase PHP developers’ productivity and enhance their user experience with the tight integration of our technology and their platform.”

“We are focused on delivering the best developer experience in the cloud for PHP developers as well as anyone who builds apps using Java, .NET, node.js, Python, and other popular open source frameworks,” said Bill Staples, Corp. Vice President, App Service, Microsoft Azure. “Z-Ray is a key addition to our App Service offering and our work with Zend also demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the open source community."

Z-Ray for Azure is a unique PHP productivity technology fully integrated with Azure App Service. It effortlessly provides developers with continuous in-depth insight into their PHP applications, delivering increased productivity, application performance, and code quality.

The integration of Z-Ray within Azure App Service delivers a unique out-of-the-box experience that allows developers to access it with the flip of a switch. Z-Ray inherently supports mobile and API development with its unique Z-Ray Live! technology.  It also features a pluggable architecture that makes it easy to customize and extend Z-Ray to any framework or application in addition to the built-in support for WordPress, Drupal, Magento and others.

“Agility and productivity are key drivers to cloud platform decisions, and developers are at the epicenter of making those choices,“ said Al Hilwa, Program Director, IDC. "By jointly integrating Z-Ray at the Azure PaaS-level, Zend & Microsoft deliver a unique new view of app behavior and performance which enables strong developer productivity and quality in the cloud."

"Developers, and more specifically open source developers, are the New Kingmakers who determine platform adoption," said Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst with RedMonk. "This is particularly true in the cloud, which is why Microsoft and Zend partnering around Z-Ray to improve the Azure developer experience is an important step for PHP developers."

Availability

Z-Ray for Azure App Service will be available in Q2 of the current calendar year.

For more information on Z-Ray for Microsoft Azure, visit: www.zend.com/z-ray-azure

For more information on Microsoft Azure App Service, visit
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app-service/

About Z-Ray for Azure

Zend Z-Ray is a unique PHP productivity technology fully integrated with Microsoft Azure App Service. Its developer dashboard effortlessly provides developers with continuous deep insight into any PHP application, without changing their workflow. Developers get unmatched visibility into code and application performance with critical information on the PHP language, PHP frameworks used, PHP based applications such as Magento, WordPress and Drupal, as well as mobile applications.

About Zend Technologies

Zend partners with businesses to rapidly deliver modern apps across mobile and cloud. Zend helped establish the PHP language, which today powers over 200 million applications and web sites. The company uniquely delivers a one-stop shop solution for developing, deploying and managing business-critical PHP applications. Zend continuous delivery is based on agile development, code protection, release automation, server management, consulting, training, and PHP certification. Zend solutions are deployed at more than 40,000 companies, including BNP Paribas, Best Buy, GE, Prada and other leading brands worldwide. Learn more at www.zend.com.