Eyeing organizations that run business-critical Web applications on the PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) platform, Zend Technologies will offer its Zend Platform 3.0 PHP application server on Monday.

Zend Platform bolsters deployments of commercial applications on PHP, Mark de Visser, Zend chief marketing officer, said. New in this version is its availability in three different editions. Versions are offered for smaller organizations, for integrating with Java, and for enterprise-level users.

Zend Platform features such capabilities as message-queuing, de Visser said. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies have PHP initiatives, he said. "It's a sizable market opportunity for us," he said.

Zend Platform fills a niche for enterprise-level PHP users, Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst at RedMonk, said. The product provides performance, caching, and reliability, he said.

"It brings many of the same benefits that [Java] application servers bring to the Java world to the PHP world," O'Grady said.

PHP has gotten the nod over Java in some installations because it offers developer productivity and is suitable for SOA, de Visser said. "The scripting languages just lend themselves [to] that," he said.

The three specific editions of Zend Platform include:

* The PS release, which loosely stands for performance server. Geared toward SMBs, it offers performance improvements and management functions. Capabilities include PHP intelligence to monitor business applications, and code acceleration and dynamic content caching to boost performance. Other features include output compression to reduce bandwidth for better responsiveness, and simplified configuration management.

* IS, for integration server, is geared to organizations with application and infrastructure needs. Integration is provided with Java and SNMP infrastructure. Reporting capabilities also are included. A Java bridge interacts with Java objects or J2EE services. Also highlighted is integration with Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools for reporting.

* ES, for enterprise server, for large organizations that need scalability and reliability. Session-clustering and high availability fail-over are featured. Job queues offer off-line processing for improved interactive responsiveness. A download server offers as much as a tenfold increase in file download speeds.

Subscriptions to Zend Platform start at $1,500 per server for the PS release.