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Zend, “the PHP company”, and Microsoft today announced a strategic partnership, and will be starting things off with the integration of Zend’s Z-Ray into the Azure App Service. Z-Ray is a “developer’s cockpit”, according to a post on the Azure blog:
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Z-Ray acts as a developer’s cockpit, continuously showing developers the inner workings of their application right inside the browser window, seamlessly integrating into the app web UI. Z-Ray also provides generic PHP information as well as support for many apps and frameworks.
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Z-Ray not only delivers insights into PHP development, but is structured to work with the most popular PHP applications like WordPress, Drupal, and Magento, and mobile capabilities to help developers understand what’s happening inside their code at an application level as well as a platform level.
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Microsoft recently revamped Azure’s web offerings into a single “Azure App Service”, and teaming with Zend will allow the company to provide better experiences for the some 5 million PHP developers around the world, developing over 200 million apps and web sites.
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Zend first formed a “technical collaboration” with Microsoft in 2006, after working with them in “stealth” mode beginning in 2001, and this latest partnership is an extension of their work together. Microsoft and Zend will talk more about Z-Ray and Azure at Build at the end of this month, and plan to incorporate Z-Ray into the Azure App Service beginning in this year’s second quarter.
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