"Zend Framework 1.8 expands the PHP framework to work with Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. Zend Framework has also added new rapid application development (RAD) features to accelerate PHP development.
"The Zend Framework is the PHP competitor to .NET, JavaEE and Ruby on Rails (RoR) development frameworks. With the new release, Zend Technologies, the lead commercial sponsor behind PHP, is aiming to build on its enterprise momentum for PHP, after releasing its Zend Server PHP middleware play last month.
""The timing for the release of Zend 1.8 could not be better as we just announced Zend Server and the two play very nicely together," Zeev Suraski, co-founder and CTO at Zend Technologies, told InternetNews.com. "Now I think we really have a complete stack available for users. We have the Zend Studio IDE [Integrated development environment] that has Zend Framework support, and Zend Server comes bundles with it, making it a good development and deployment stack for PHP."
