Israeli startup Zend Technologies has fired 25 percent of its R&D team (at least ten people), as well as others across the company, in an attempt to become cash flow positive, says a source close to the company. Zend offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications. It sells software and support services around that (just as Red Hat does with its distribution of Linux). We have an e-mail out to the company asking for a comment.
Update: A spokesperson from the company’s PR firm says: “Yes, I can confirm that Zend made the layoffs, but we cannot comment on the numbers or reasons for the action.”
The job cuts could be an attempt to pretty itself up for a sale. Back in 2006, Oracle wanted to buy it for $100 million to $200 million. It might still be interested. IBM, which already one of Zend’s strategic partners, might also want to take a look.
Another partner is Microsoft, which has already integrated Zend into Windows Server. Thanks to Zend, programmers who don’t want to be bothered with .Net can use PHP instead to create applications that run on Windows Server. If Microsoft ever buys Yahoo, picking up Zend would make even more sense since Yahoo is littered with PHP apps.
Zend getting rid of its R&D team seems to be ridding itself of half the reason why software companies are acquired - the talent.
Interesting. Do you know which products are affected? I can’t imagine the core PHP product is affected
Zend has nothing to do with the core PHP product.
for 6 years develop php over 40 projects, it just hard to let me use zend. People understand why php is the most acceptable language for web programming. For zend, it just too hard to develop and maintain. For the record of the performance, bah… I really don’t understan y ppl want to spend more CPU to encrypt and decrypt script!
PHP is not a product, its an open-source project. Many Zend employees including its founders are contributers, but it has no formal ties to Zend.
In a dream-world Microsoft buys Zend, implements PHP as the de-facto standard for Windows servers scripting language and relieves the world from the pain that is ASP.NET.
Yahoo!, anyone?
@4 > “In a dream-world Microsoft … relieves the world from the pain that is ASP.NET”
Couldn’t agree with this more. Sometimes I wish that was true. I guess it will stay as a daydream, but glad to know that I’m not alone.
“In a dream-world Microsoft buys Zend, implements PHP as the de-facto standard for Windows servers scripting language and relieves the world from the pain that is ASP.NET”
There’s not much stopping MS from doing this already, I don’t think. PHP is open source, and doesn’t have a terribly infectious license, if memory serves correctly.
Oh no, nothing good can come out of M$ putting their hands on PHP.
Everything they touch turns into shit.
If anyone buys Zend, it’s going to be Sun. With their Platform product’s Java Bridge integration and the new Studio IDE built on top of Eclipse, they sure are snuggling up.
I have been using php for last 6 years and become Zend Certified Engineer in 2006 but I never use the Zend products. I feel myself more comfortable with just php.
I don’t think Yahoo would be interested since I think they have more PHP talent in-house already than what Zend could provide, and Yahoo isn’t in the desktop developer IDE business, so I doubt the product side is of any interest either.
I am sure soon all be clarified by Andi Gutmans in PHP-Tek 2008 State of the Union keynote speech.
Anyway, I don’t think a company would fire their R&D developers if they were sure they would be bought soon. The buying company would be able to afford those developers and many more if necessary.
It seems to me that Zend will try to avoid being sold to any company because they want to remain neutral so they can embrace as much partners as possible. Being bought by IBM, Microsoft, Oracle would mean dropping prior partnerships that they have already in place. That is why I think they already refused offers in the past and continue to refuse offers for as long as they can.
I think at best Sun could be a buyer too, as it would be a logical follow-up to the recent purchase of MySQL AB. Still I am not sure that Zend would continue to be neutral under Sun wings.
Given this, I suspect that Zend is not able or not interested to capture more funding from investors. In that case it makes sense to layoff part of their staff to become cash-flow positive and eventually survive the ongoing/upcoming “nuclear winter” which is the name that Marc Andreessen uses to refer to the recession. Marc Andreessen is a member of the Zend board.
My guess would be Zend focussing more on services (training, consultancy) and less on the development of it’s own (closed source) software.
Not sure what their core product currently is. But perhaps the layoff is the result of developing there IDE “Zend Studio” as part of Eclipse and not as standalone java app anymore. What is the most used product of their portfolio? Might be the free Zend Optimizer.
Been telling everyone for the better part of a year that PHP has ‘jumped the shark’ and this proves it.
What bitter irony if PHP became just another member of the .NET family.
The economy is down. People and businesses everywhere are feeling the pinch and it is becoming ever more important for folks to pare things down to manageable levels.
Besides, those PHP programmers are probably better off. The Silicon Valley PHP developer market is huge and growing like gangbusters right now. Just look at the openings: Ning, Digg, Facebook, Yahoo, Google… top notch PHP developers will not have a problem finding great companies to work for that will have the money needed to pay them well AND put them on great projects.
It is a great time to be a PHP developer. Maybe not if you work for Zend, but still…