PHP TAKES ON BUSINESS-CRITICAL APPS - WHY ARE NYSE EURONEXT, WEBEX AND BNB PARIBAS BETTING ON AN OPEN SOURCE LANGUAGE SUCH AS PHP?
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Impact Assessment // JULY 2013
IMPACT
Assessment
PHP Takes on
Business-Critical Apps
Why Are NYSE Euronext, WebEx and BNB Paribas Betting on an Open
Source Language Such as PHP?
within the next three years, mobile app development projects will
An Exclusive Research Report outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1, and that 90 per-
cent of PHP developers are already working on mobile apps today.2
By Eric J. Bruno Although the future appears bright for PHP in all areas of
PHP is among the most popular languages for corporate
Web development today. Sometimes referred to as “Internet
application development, some companies still have concerns
$
about whether PHP is a safe bet for their applications. This paper
English” for its ease of use, PHP is the most frequent choice examines the benefits of broader PHP adoption in an organization,
for the back end of Web and mobile applications. In recent along with areas for further consideration.
$
research,1 four out of five decision makers confirmed that their
teams can develop faster in PHP, and that PHP provides the Benefits of PHP in the Enterprise
easiest choice for the development of cloud applications. But As more new applications are based on Web and mobile
is it a safe bet for business-critical application development? technology, bridging the worlds of older core enterprise
software and platforms with newer architectures and
capabilities is imperative. Organizations are turning to
How Does PHP Measure Up? PHP to provide these integration capabilities with an eye to modern
According to Forrester, companies have increased their user interfaces, critical application performance, reliability and the
use of open source programming languages for their commercial support expected in the enterprise.
application development over the years. PHP has long According to a 2012 UBM Tech/Zend study, more than 60
been a leader in open source, and it’s proven to be a leading devel- percent of PHP applications being built today are business critical in
opment language among enterprise developers as well. Multiple nature. Additionally, the study shows that the adoption of PHP in the
online employment sites report PHP as their leading developer tech- enterprise is growing in general.3 The reasons for this are threefold:
nology in terms of job skills’ demand. For instance, trends reported First, PHP developers are abundant; second, PHP helps new develop-
by employment meta-search site Indeed.com show that demand ers come up to speed more quickly; and third, PHP enables shorter
for PHP developers has grown and outpaced other languages since development cycles. Given these benefits, its vibrant ecosystem and
2006. In fact, demand for PHP developers has grown more than 350 expanse of partners, PHP adoption continues to grow.
percent in that same timeframe.
Given how well it integrates and even complements applica- Developer Talent and Availability
tions written in languages such as Java, PHP fits well into existing As previously mentioned, the availability of programming talent
enterprise infrastructures and cloud frameworks. The world of is a big reason enterprises continue to choose PHP. With more
mobile development has also embraced PHP. Studies suggest that than 5 million PHP programmers active globally, the demand for
Sponsored by
R
server
IMPact assessment: PHP Takes on Business-Critical Apps UBM tech // JULY 2013
“ ”
PHP development teams benefit from the use of quality
PHP frameworks that offer best practices and off-the-shelf
functionality to speed up software development.
PHP remains strong and is on track for fur- Framework, Symfony and Cake PHP. Speed of Development
ther growth. This is second only to Java, the As development has embraced the agile PHP has a reputation of being easy to learn
most popular platform for the enterprise, software process, PHP tools and frameworks and to use, which leads to decreased ramp-up
which currently has about 9 million develop- have grown to fill related requirements. The times and increased productivity. More than
ers worldwide. 4 Additionally, and perhaps PHP platforms and frameworks available 88 percent of business executives polled by
more importantly, as the demand for mobile today support the agile DevOps movement, UBM Tech/Zend said that PHP enables faster
applications grows across a wide range of where advanced deployment needs are met speed of development overall. Additionally, 97
platforms, the need for a common technol- to support maximum uptime and agility. percent of those executives plan to develop
future applications in PHP as a result.
When asked for the main reason why
PHP was chosen for application development,
most organizations cited speed of develop-
ment. This number is larger for organizations
that have already deployed applications
written in PHP. When it comes to delivering
software, implementing new features and
satisfying customer needs, everyone gains
when the process is as fast as possible. PHP
helps to deliver on this promise.
Scalability and Performance
When one thinks of business-critical appli-
cations, e-commerce, billing, client-facing
applications come to mind. Due to the critical
nature of these applications, scalability and
reliability are crucial. Often, entire business
processes rely on these applications, and
their continued availability can have a direct
effect on a company’s financial performance.
PHP platforms help applications scale
ogy to support them all will grow as well. No As development becomes more itera- dynamically to meet user requests out of the
other language or developer community is as tive, the need to streamline end-to-end box. Support for concurrency, optimized user
prepared to meet the needs of future Web processes increases. There are tools and request/response cycle processing, caching
and mobility apps as PHP. Given its support application platforms for PHP that inte- techniques and Web-based load-balancing tech-
for open standards and the available pool of grate with popular version-control systems nology can all help to ensure that performance
PHP developers at the ready today, PHP will and continuous-integration (CI) systems and scale occur automatically for an application.
be the choice for mobile back-end develop- and methodologies. When asked about application challenges,
ment in the future. Integration with software configura- developers responding to the UBM Tech/Zend
tion management and release management survey said performance and scalability were
Developer Processes, Tools and software is a crucial need of enterprise low on PHP developers’ lists of concerns.
Frameworks developers. A commercial PHP application
PHP development teams benefit from the platform can work with continuous inte- Cloud Readiness
use of quality PHP frameworks that offer gration tools for rapid development and When asked where they expect to deploy their
best practices and off-the-shelf functional- deployment. The result is a development applications, just over 60 percent of develop-
ity to speed up software development. For process that’s more consistent and reliable, ers surveyed indicated they intended to deploy
instance, the PHP ecosystem includes sev- helping companies meet enterprise applica- to the cloud in 2012. As of 2013, this num-
eral successful frameworks, such as Zend tion service-level agreements (SLAs). ber has grown to nearly 70 percent.5 Due to
// 2 //IMPact assessment: PHP Takes on Business-Critical Apps UBM tech // JULY 2013
“ ”
PHP frameworks and Web-based tools enable professional
development teams to securely integrate social media and
collaboration into their business applications.
its integration with other data center tech- Real-World PHP Usage
nology in terms of hardware and software
(i.e., multi-core servers with high memory Many businesses today use PHP as a devel- guidelines demanded improved productivity and
opment platform, and Internet research firm reduced infrastructure and downtime costs.
capacity, Java and .Net-based services and
Netcraft found PHP powering about 244 mil- NYSE Euronext chose Zend PHP applica-
enterprise databases), PHP provides superior lion websites as of January 2013. These case tion development solutions and Drupal, including
cloud performance. studies point to PHP as a success factor in a Zend Studio IDE, for application development,
According to the UBM Tech/Zend survey, wide range of use cases. debugging and profiling. Zend Server runs the
PHP developers ranked cloud-readiness high on websites, performs proactive monitoring and
the list of reasons to choose PHP. Organizations BNP Paribas automates troubleshooting and optimization.
responding to the survey also indicated that BNP Paribas is a banking and financial services Zend Server Cluster Manager supports easy scal-
firm with more than €43 billion in net banking ability in multiserver environments.
fewer servers are required to support PHP appli-
income and operations in 80 countries world- As a result, NYSE Euronext developed and
cations than those written in other dynamic wide. Its challenge: to accelerate development launched a series of 40 business-critical websites
languages. Robust PHP application platforms and delivery of high-performing Web applications within 18 months — a fraction of the time spent
help to take advantage of cloud deployments that help employees connect, stay informed and just in designing its previous Web application
by including clustering, advanced caching provide exceptional client services. platform. In fact, its Web development cycle
techniques, security, job-queuing techniques To meet this challenge, BNP Paribas imple- went from two years to two weeks. Read more
mented Zend Server, Zend Studio and Zend at http://static.zend.com/topics/NYSE-Euronext-
to improve throughput, and automated deploy-
Framework, as well as other PHP-compatible CS-0512-R1-EN.pdf.
ment with provisioning to enable elasticity. technologies, in a Linux server environment. As
Other cloud-based implementations — a result, BNP Paribas developed more than 700 Cisco WebEx
instant messaging software, social network tools and applications in a fraction of the time and Millions of people rely on Cisco WebEx, part of
feeds such as Twitter and Facebook, and cost that would have been required using previ- Cisco Systems, for conferencing and collaboration
blogging sites — have become crucial to ous solutions. Read more at http://static.zend. solutions that combine real-time sharing with
com/topics/BNP-Paribas-CS-0512-R2-EN.pdf. phone conferencing and video. Cisco wanted
how companies communicate with custom-
to drive more WebEx business through its part-
ers and do business. It’s now a requirement Conftec GmbH ners using free trial offers as a catalyst for lead
to integrate social networking applications Conftec, an independent software vendor that generation. Cisco WebEx needed an improved
with new enterprise Web and mobile devel- manages 47,000 retail orders per year in nine automated trial platform with a high degree of
opment. PHP frameworks and Web-based countries, used Zend Studio and Zend Server to efficiency, reliability and scalability to support
tools enable professional development teams build mission-critical retail and ERP applications its growing partner community and increasing
from the ground up. “Flexibility and functional- demand for online conferencing.
to securely integrate social media and col-
ity were important reasons for initially adopting To meet these challenges, Cisco deployed
laboration into their business applications. PHP and Zend,” said Frederik Glücks, managing Zend Studio IDE, Zend Ser ver and Zend
director of Conftec. Framework. Using the Zend PHP stack, Cisco
Complementary Language Glücks also cited the PHP community and built a new trial-offer platform, a mobile website
PHP is an Internet-aware platform with tools PHP’s integration with MySQL as reasons for and an internal project management applica-
and frameworks that meet organizations’ choosing PHP. Using Zend Studio and Zend tion; it also redeveloped its webinar marketing
Server for Conftec’s constantly evolving appli- platform. Zend’s monitoring, code tracing, job
collaboration, application security, and
cations has allowed the company to gain better queuing and optimization capabilities helped
server performance and scalability needs. control over its applications while saving time Cisco improve the end-user experience of trial
Additionally, PHP integrates with other enter- and ensuring quality. Read more at http:// offers by 68 percent (based on best-time-to-
prise languages and platforms such as Java www.zend.com/en/resources/case-studies. complete-trial signup). The technology also
and .Net, and with modern Web application allowed Cisco to achieve 20 to 30 percent code
architectures. Because of this integration, NYSE Euronext reuse, which saved development effort and
NYSE Euronext, the world’s leading equities accelerated the development cycle and time to
PHP helps companies leverage existing invest-
exchange group, sought to replace its existing market by an average of 1.5 months for each
ments in other technologies. websites with improved sites to drive business project. Read more at http://static.zend.com/
value online. A new Web application development topics/Cisco-WebEx-CS-0511-FINAL.pdf.
Support and Reliability platform and processes were needed for rapid To read other customer success stories
Enterprise application support, monitoring and development and deployment, efficient scale-up involving PHP and the Zend platform, visit http://
overall reliability rank high among developers’ and management, and high availability. Tough www.zend.com/en/resources/case-studies.
reasons for choosing PHP. Frameworks that
// 3 //IMPact assessment: PHP Takes on Business-Critical Apps UBM tech // JULY 2013
“ ”
To help determine whether PHP is ready for business-critical
app development, companies need only look at the growing
number of organizations that rely on PHP for the back end of
their mobile applications.
enable faster development time also enhance aspects of application development must be Instead, the best chance companies have
deployment reliability, monitoring and produc- addressed by an effective development plat- to achieve optimal performance and scalability
tion application administration. A limited set form. Carefully considering how PHP fits into is to use an integrated, and tuned, PHP stack
of commercial PHP stacks provide the support these requirements can help companies make with enterprise features and tools. Features
needed to identify and fix problems before informed decisions when planning enterprise such as PHP caching and user-session failover
they cripple key business processes. Some application development. and data caching can result in huge gains in
large software companies are beginning to For instance, the do-it-yourself (DIY) terms of reliability and scalability.6 Fortunately,
support PHP as part of their product offer- approach to software stacks and develop- there are commercial platforms offered by
ings. For instance, IBM now offers PHP support ment frameworks can be found pervasively vendors such as Zend that offer all of these
as part of IBM SmartCloud; Red Hat includes in the PHP community and can have distinct features, assembled by PHP and Web gurus,
Zend Server with its OpenShift platform; and downsides. For example, if a
Microsoft supports PHP in its Windows Azure single developer is respon-
and WebMatrix products, along with Google sible for maintaining security
and others. patches for each element of
Commercial PHP platforms from vendors the application stack after it
such as Zend offer routine patches to ensure has moved into production,
security, developer dashboards to identify the company comes to rely on
potential problems before they affect users, specialized knowledge that
and monitoring tools to identify problems in only current developers have,
production when they happen. All of these fea- leaving companies at risk each
tures help improve developer efficiency, ensure time a developer switches jobs.
that application SLAs are met and reduce the Companies that have adopted
time it takes to identify and fix customer-facing PHP for their critical applica-
issues. Zend Server customer NYSE Euronext, tions look to commercial PHP
for example, recently reduced its two-year Web platforms and vendors to
development cycle to an iterative, two-week resolve these issues and pro-
production cycle by adopting agile delivery and vide ongoing support, so the
PHP (see sidebar, Real-World PHP Usage). entire burden does not fall on
their development function.
PHP: Look Before You to help companies safely meet their business-
Leap – Things to Consider
$
To help determine whether PHP
Scalability and Performance
Performance and scale aren’t achieved by sim-
critical application requirements. Building
application-specific performance enhance-
is ready for business-critical app ply installing an open source software stack. ments in-house — although common — may
development, companies need only Although open source PHP is an excellent not result in an easily shareable or reusable
look at the growing number of organizations starting point for an application, it doesn’t code base.
that rely on PHP for the back end of their mobile come with built-in enterprise features such
applications, as well as those with social net- as clustering, high availability, real-time per- Security
work connectivity. Clearly, many organizations formance diagnostics and specialized caching PHP developers are often challenged when
have decided that PHP is a safe bet for the future (along with other strategies) for optimal per- configuring a consistent and secure PHP stack
of their business. However, there are some areas formance. Additionally, without intimate for development and production. Decision
of PHP development that deserve more consid- knowledge of HTTP, networking, database makers polled reveal that security is not high
eration and shouldn’t be left to chance. integration, caching and memory manage- on the list of reasons to choose PHP, and some
From design and development to test- ment, it can be difficult to reach optimal developers consider security as a challenge
ing and deployment to customer support, all performance and scalability with PHP. in PHP development. Although PHP is not
© 2013 UBM LLC. All rights reserved.
// 4 //IMPact assessment: PHP Takes on Business-Critical Apps UBM tech // JULY 2013
“ ”
Today’s commercial PHP platforms help companies meet
customer SLAs and release new features quickly, while
tapping into a large talent pool of developers worldwide.
inherently insecure, clearly PHP developers When building a business-critical application, remain a solid option for business-critical appli-
and framework vendors must ensure that all companies should consider a well-known com- cation development, PHP continues to gain
security needs — real or perceived — are met. mercial PHP stack for both development and advantages and has proven to be a strong com-
Fortunately, these issues are more often production, based on a set of best practices petitor for new applications, compared with
the case with DIY approaches than with com- gained from successful commercial deployments. other languages. And a growing number of
mercial PHP platforms. Companies should commercial vendors offer a stable set of frame-
decide whether to rely on their own team Support and Compliance works, tools and platforms to help improve PHP
to maintain the security of their PHP stack or Given the open source nature of PHP and development processes.
to turn to a commercial PHP platform where available frameworks, commercial support can As a result, PHP can be a reliable, secure,
an external vendor is responsible for ensur- be a challenge as developers often take a DIY scalable platform capable of helping orga-
ing that PHP security patches are proactively attitude. The PHP community as a whole could nizations build business-critical applications
tested and delivered when required. improve on its “roll-your-own” approach to efficiently and quickly. Today’s commercial
PHP development. Efforts to select a com- PHP platforms help companies meet customer
Maturity mercial platform with enterprise-level support SLAs and release new features quickly, while
PHP development gained momentum with can help improve overall application reliability
tapping into a large talent pool of developers
the release of PHP3 in 1998, and a full rewrite and SLAs. For business-critical applications,
of the PHP’s core in 1999. However, because worldwide. Choosing PHP is a safe choice,
open source developer forums are not suf-
PHP was initially focused on speeding up as proven by leaders in PHP adoption such
ficient when problems arise. A commercial
dynamic Web application development, best as Facebook, NYSE Euronext, Yahoo!, BNB
PHP platform with vendor support is critical
practices and enterprise features weren’t to enterprise application success. Paribas and many other companies that rely
$
always foremost in PHP developers’ minds. on it for their critical business needs. n
However, this same open source commu- The PHP Enterprise
nity involvement has led to a vibrant ecosystem Conclusion
for PHP framework and platform development, Although well-known devel-
leading to mature commercial implementations. opment environments such as Java and .Net
About Zend
Zend partners with businesses to rapidly deliver modern apps across mobile and cloud. Zend helped establish the PHP
language, which today powers over 240 million applications and web sites. Zend’s flagship offering, Zend Server, is
the leading Application Platform for developing, deploying and managing business-critical applications in PHP. Zend
solutions are deployed at more than 40,000 companies, including NYSE Euronext, BNP Paribas, Bell Helicopter, France
Telecom and other leading brands worldwide. Learn more at www.zend.com.
1
UBM Tech and Zend, “The State of PHP in the Enterprise,” June 2012, http://www.zend.com/en/company/community/state-of-php-in-the-enterprise
2
Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse: Developers and the App Economy, June 2013
3
Redmonk.com, The Redmonk Programming Language Rankings, http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2013/02/28/language-rankings-1-13/
4
Oracle,Learn About Java Developers,http://java.com/en/about/
5
Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse: Developers and the App Economy, 2011 and 2013
6
Web Performance, Scalability, and Testing Techniques, Jonathan Klein, http://www.slideshare.net/jnklein/web-performance-scalability-and-testing-techniques-boston-php-meetup
© 2013 UBM LLC. All rights reserved.
// 5 //You can also read
