Microsoft and Zend (PHP)

With all the hoopla over Microsoft and Novell, this little story got buried. On Halloween no less Microsoft and Zend announced a collaborative effort to boost PHP running on IIS. It would be a good thing to have happen, considering that I like to write on PHP and deploying non-trivial PHP (or at times, even trivial PHP) content to PHP running under IIS can be a royal PITA, especially with regards to performance:

"The way PHP's run on Windows up to today is in a way that does not perform," Gutmans said.

Ahmen, brother. Been there, seen that, and have the results to show it. I will say that over the last three months it has improved on one site (Incose.org), but I can't say if it's due to updates in PHP or a better understanding of the Incose sysadmins on how to properly manage PHP under IIS.

Why is Microsoft after PHP? Because it hits multiple targets with just one very big, well placed stone. First, lots of web developers use PHP. Add up all those who use it on both Windows and Linux, and PHP tends to dwarf ASP.NET users. Second is that PHP's one of the key drivers in the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) platform. Microsoft already has the OS, web server, and database. All Microsoft has to do is convince a sizable group of PHP content creators to move over painlessly to WISP (Windows/IIS/SQL Server/PHP).

LAMP vs WISP. Hmmm... You use a LAMP to bring light into darkness. But a WISP is something thin, frail, or light-weight. Yes. I think it fits.