Zend Technologies, Inc. (privately held, venture-backed) announced today at Adobe Systems’ (NASDAQ: ADBE) annual gathering of web designers and software development professionals that they have jointly delivered support in Zend Framework 1.7 for Action Message Format (AMF), a key element of their partnership to improve rich Internet application development.

Zend Framework 1.7 also features significant performance enhancements, speeding load times by 25%-50%, makes available for general release a native DB2 Adapter to access DB2/400 data on the IBM i platform, updates Dojo Toolkit support (including a new editor dijit), and also provides, through a Zend Framework community contribution, a component for the popular JQuery AJAX library.

“Over the life of the Zend Framework project, with close to 9.5 million downloads since project inception, momentum and community support has consistently continued to grow,” said Andi Gutmans, CTO, Sr. VP R&D and Alliances, and co-founder at Zend. “New to this release is a native DB2 driver for the fast-growing IBM i platform, plus we’ve incorporated our agile continuous integration process for IBM i meaning Zend Framework on i5/OS gets unit-tested thoroughly and continuously as we make changes to the code.”

“We’re particularly proud that in Zend Framework 1.7 the community contributions make up well over half of the new and improved components,” continued Gutmans, “including a component for the JQuery AJAX JavaScript library. We’re also really happy that Adobe Systems has joined the Zend Framework project as a contributor with a new AMF component supporting their Flex framework and the Flash Platform, part of a larger partnership with them, which also includes cooperation aimed to ensure their FlexBuilder environment works with our Zend Studio PHP development environment on the Eclipse platform.”

Zend Framework is a Zend-sponsored open source PHP application framework best known for its support for flexible, efficient creation of web applications. The Flex framework is a highly productive, open source framework from Adobe for building and maintaining expressive Web applications that deploy consistently across all major browsers and operating systems using Adobe® Flash Player.

Integration of AMF support into Zend Framework means PHP developers can now use the open, binary, high-speed format to enable their applications built with Adobe Flex® and Adobe Flash® to easily and rapidly exchange data with their servers.

PHP developers can now immediately download the latest release of Zend Framework 1.7 and leverage the fast, reliable transfer of data between the server and client tiers of their web applications. To download Zend Framework’s latest version or to learn more, please visit http://framework.zend.com and for more details & tutorials on using the AMF component, please visit http://developer.adobe.com/flex/

“Adobe Flex and Flash are being rapidly adopted by developers, enterprise IT departments and independent software providers who rely on the power and capabilities of PHP,” said Michele Turner, vice president, product marketing and management at Adobe. “Today, we’ve enabled those developers using Flex and Zend Framework to rapidly deliver rich, highly engaging web applications to both the browser and the desktop.”

One customer already making use of the new Action Message Format support in Zend Framework is Synapse Group, an interactive agency with creative artists and software developers jointly building high-touch web technology for Fortune 100 clientele, so they can effectively engage consumers:

“Our mission is to create unforgettable user experiences. Zend’s solutions have allowed us to do just that. Support in Zend Framework for Adobe’s Flash Platform means we can integrate our rich Adobe Flex and Flash front-end user interfaces with our PHP-driven back-end platforms much faster and more reliably, while delivering high-value for our clients and for our own technology platform offerings,” said Zach Saltzberg, Founder and Creative Director at Synapse Group. “We have leveraged Zend & Adobe’s technology to develop our latest products and platforms, including Syndeca – our rich media publishing platform in use by Fortune 100 companies, Plexity – our customized tracking & analytics solution, and Sharality - a viral sharing, auto-installing tool connecting the social web.”

“Zend_Amf delivers many advantages over other AMF back-ends—like a vibrant open source community and wide support. As early adopters of AMF technology for web application development, we’re happy that Zend & Adobe have delivered this key technology together so we can have all our application components standardized on one framework and a single application stack,” says Kai Harris, Director of Operations at Synapse Group. “This simplifies our internal development and test process, as well as reduces the operations overhead needed to manage our application clusters.”

About Zend Technologies, Inc.

Zend Technologies, Inc., The PHP Company, is the leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying, and managing business-critical PHP applications. PHP is used by more than twenty million web sites and has quickly become the most popular language for building dynamic web applications. Deployed at more than 25,000 companies worldwide, the Zend family of products is a comprehensive platform for supporting the entire lifecycle of PHP applications. Zend is headquartered in Cupertino, California.

For more information, please visit http://www.zend.com or call +1 408-253-8800.