IBM Backs PHP for Web Development

Christopher Reimer writes "C|Net is reporting that IBM will be getting behind the open-source language PHP for its WebSphere server software and tools. From the article: 'Big Blue's public commitment to PHP is significant because the company has the technical and marketing resources to accelerate usage of the open-source product.'" Evidently PHP is indeed becoming more popular.

Comments

Websphere == product line brand name

[meatball_mulligan]

The term "Websphere" could mean alot of different things. It is IBM's branding for all of their middleware and web related products:

• Websphere Application Server(WAS)
  This is their J2EE application server. It plays in the sam space as BEA's WebLogic App Server, JBoss, etc. It's the cornerstone of their Websphere line and comes in many sizes and flavors, running on anything from a single server, to clusters of servers, to minis, to the Mainframe.
• Websphere Studio Application Developer(WSAD)
  This is their primary J2EE development tool. It's built around the Eclipse framework IBM developed and released to open source, so their are also tons and tons of other tools that plugin to WSAD.
• Websphere Portal Server(WPS)
  A portal and colaboration server built on top of WAS. WPS also includes a lot of the technologies that grew out of their Domino platform.
• Websphere MQ
  IBM's Message Oriented Middleware foundation. (Formerly MQSeries)
• Websphere Business Integration
  EAI
• Websphere Commerce Server
  B2C
• Websphere Everyplace
  mobile connectivity

... and on and on for about a hundred products. One of the few products not branded "Websphere" is their web server, an Apache distro, called simply "IBM HTTPD" or "IBM HTTP Server".