PORTLAND, Ore. -- July 26, 2004 -- Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the Zend PHP Certification program that encompasses curriculum criteria specified by the Zend PHP Education Advisory Board as essential to demonstrate expert proficiency in PHP. Zend will offer the very first PHP certifications through the mobile testing facility it is hosting at The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) on July 26-30 in Portland, Oregon.
As PHP continues to gain momentum in the enterprise, Zend has witnessed a spike in demand for developers who are proficient at developing, building, and managing PHP applications. To address this market need, Zend gathered together the PHP Education Advisory Board -- a group of highly-regarded PHP luminaries -- to create a certification program that will set the industry standard for recognizing and certifying PHP expertise. The PHP Education Advisory Board includes Marcus Boerger, John Coggeshall, Andi Gutmans, Martin Jansen, Daniel Kushner, Derick Rethans, George Schlossnagle, Damien Seguy, Chris Shiflett, David Sklar, Zeev Suraski, and Marco Tabini.
"Our mission at Zend is to provide the tools, resources and community that will make PHP viable for the enterprise," said Andi Gutmans, Zend co-founder and vice president of technology. "As part of this effort, we want to ensure that developers have access to everything they will need to build robust, business-critical PHP applications. The Zend Certified Engineer credential helps developers get their resumes noticed, gain recognition from employers and differentiate themselves from non-certified developers."
To administer the certification program, Zend has partnered with Pearson VUE and will offer the PHP certification exams through Pearson's network of more than 3,500 testing centers. Once they have passed the exam, Zend Certified PHP developers are listed in the Zend Yellow Pages for Zend Certified Engineers, receive discounts on Zend products and PHP conferences, and get to preview emerging Zend products prior to release.
In addition to the certification program, Zend has expanded its online resources for PHP developers with the introduction of the Zend Education Center, a comprehensive online source for developers and employers to access PHP training resources, certification news and information on career development. As part of its PHP education initiative, Zend is developing a network of experienced training partners that can be accessed via the Zend Education Center. Zend's site also features an online PHP training program that guides developers through PHP's essentials, including: Object Oriented programming, security, performance, MySQL and relational database design, as well as enterprise development using Zend Studio, the only professional PHP IDE.
The Zend Mobile Test Center is sponsored by IBM and will be located at the Douglas Fir Room and open from 11:00 a.m.-5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, July 28 and Thursday, July 29 and from 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. on Friday, July 30. To register for the exam at OSCON and to receive a $50 discount, please visit http://www.vue.com/zend/ and choose test center Oregon, Portland, Zend Technologies -- Mobile1. Use discount code OSCON2004.
"IBM supports certification as a business solution, as a way for skilled IT professionals to demonstrate their expertise to the world. Zend's Certification Program is further evidence of the maturing of Open Source technology," said Doug Heintzman, Director of Technical Strategy, IBM Software Group. "IBM is pleased to provide the ThinkPad laptop computers that will be used to administer the tests in Zend's mobile test center."
About Zend Technologies, Inc.
Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, is the leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical PHP applications. Zend and its founders are the creators and ongoing innovators of PHP, which is used by more than 15 million Web sites and has quickly become the most popular language for building dynamic Web applications. Deployed at more than 6,000 customers worldwide, the Zend Family of Products is a comprehensive platform for supporting the entire lifecycle of PHP applications. Zend is a privately held, venture funded company based in Cupertino, California. For more information, please visit www.zend.com, or call 408-253-8800.
