Case Studies
By implementing Zend Solutions, our customers are better leveraging the Web and unlocking greater value from their business-critical PHP applications. To learn more about how top companies are utilizing Zend Solutions and expertise, scroll down to read our case studies.
Challenge
The Montréal Exchange (MX) manages 13 Websites and Web applications, all of which are developed in PHP. Coding and implementation techniques differ for each of these sites.
In July 2007 MX approached Bell Canada for production and development support. They also decided to migrate to a more robust architecture because:
- Non-uniform fragments of legacy code make maintenance difficult.
- Code duplication means error-fixing in multiple locations.
- Separation of design and programming work is tedious & error-prone as database queries, presentation and business logic of each Web page are in one monolithic block.
- Due to a high level of coupling in their components, bug-repair in one area of an application affects other areas of the site — as such, more time is spent on bug-fixes.
Solution
In choosing PHP, Bell Canada and MX confirm their commitment to open-source. Zend's Web Application server and environment (Zend Platform combined with Zend Core) and Zend solutions provide them with commercial products that offer manageability, monitoring, and performance improvement of their PHP solution.
Bell Canada decided to customize MX development methods by basing them on Zend Framework (Zend Framework and Template Lite). Pre-built, tested, and open-source components save time, shorten QA cycles and deliver higher quality results to end-users.
Best practices in Zend Framework are key in training new developers and keeping implementation professional, object-oriented, and maintainable—while still delivering applications in less time.
Challenge
The company Engineering was instrumental in the reorganization of services at the Ministry of Employment. They had to establish a system for facilitating the paperwork and for the complete digitization of information. As this is public money, everything has to be handled with complete transparency, fairness and optimization.
Solution
Engineering focused on PHP for its rapid development, efficiency, scalability and its appropriate use of resources. The decision to use a PHP development environment as advanced as Zend Studio together with the Zend Framework was a functional decision because of the excellent integration of these two products. The resulting solutions provided not only the management of a back end, but also of a front end for the applications which citizens and businesses can use for exchanging information via web services with social funding agencies.
Challenge
FidoGroup’s technological skill supports very large web events such as MTV Storytellers, the signature of the European Constitution and the Superbike World Championship. These events generate enormous interest, and there is now a critical mass of broadband users who are prepared to broadcast content directly via the web rather than by television.
Solution
PHP is crucial for the management of critical events; obviously a web failure would mean a colossal loss of image. That is why, in addition to adopting a reliable and avant-garde technology such as PHP, the FidoGroup’s PHP developers rely on flexible, powerful and tested tools such as Zend Core and Zend Studio.
Challenge
Magento™, is an open-source eCommerce platform developed using PHP 5. Created by Varien™, Magento has been adopted by thousands of users and is implemented by Websites processing over 10,000 orders/day using multiple servers and cluster architectures.
Originally, Varien used their own homegrown framework. Although workable, this solution presented inherent challenges:
- Training new developers in their in-house framework proved costly and time-consuming.
- Supporting an in-house framework without the wisdom of an open-source community was difficult.
- Hiring talent to use in-house framework was challenging - not a ‘career-builder’.
Solution
The Magento project chose the industry standard Zend Framework to provide them with a simple, object-oriented, and flexible solution that encompasses best practices and agile & testing methodologies resulting in rapid development of enterprise-grade Web applications.
Widespread community support for Zend Framework gives Magento contributors and users an open source framework with a wealth of documentation and momentum behind it.
Zend Framework licensing protects the entire ecosystem of products built on the Magento code base, allowing end-user clients and customers to build, extend, and deploy unlimited applications without concern for intellectual property issues.
Challenge
Zero9 Group works in a growing market segment where competitiveness is a key element: Web and mobile content and services providers in B2B and in B2C.In order to maintain their great results and to face the new challenges of their dynamic market, Zero9 needed technological solutions and collaboration that could assure innovation, flexible localization and quick time to market. This could only be achieved with cutting edge architectures and technologies. This is why Zero9 decided to update their existing infrastructure and to focus on and invest in its value.
Solution
Zero9 chose to use PHP because it’s an easy to learn but robust and flexible language that can totally support enterprise business critical applications.The database, MySQL, was totally redesigned, standardised and optimized. The asynchronous processing, developed for messaging in the different communication channels (SMS, MMS, WAP, WEB, IVR), was managed with Zend Platform’s Job Queue feature. This allowed centralised administration of all processes which meant optimised resources, better performance and easy management.
Challenge
Flight Systems Industrial Products (FSIP) specializing in the remanufacture of electronic controls for battery operated and electric vehicles. The Service Center was tasked to develop an application to track parts usage, reduce costs and improve response times.
Solution
Wilson Business System Consulting’s wireless bar code scanning solution utilizes PHP on both the hand-held scanner and the System i. The application affords FSIP to track inventory in real-time, reduce service center costs, and dramatically improve customer service levels.
Challenge
Barona’s existing green screen payroll programs were neither easily accessible nor intuitive for the majority of service-based employees. This structure prevented many staff members from monitoring their earnings and vacation accrual information.
Solution
Olen Business Consulting developed a PHP front-end to leveraging the RPG business logic enabling employees to access the payroll application via kiosks located around the resort. This ultimately saved Barona an estimated $50,000 annually in postage, printing and assorted other mailing costs associated with the paycheck stubs for direct deposit.
Challenge
Although Aarrowcast is considered one of the most modern foundries in the world their business processes in dealing with outside vendors and suppliers were less than leading edge. The blizzard of procurement paperwork, lack of centralization, and limited vendor performance processes creates inefficiencies throughout the business. The challenge was to build a browser-based portal that would connect into the MRP system and permit vendors to access RFQ information automatically, without purchasing having to send out for bids.
Solution
Aarrowcast enlisted the services of NSC to develop what would become the Supplier Portal. NSC was up for the task, knowing that PHP products from Zend would be key to developing the most elegant, cost-effective solution in the shortest timeframe. The Zend-based portal now automates the entire RFQ, quote, purchase order, receiving, inventory management and payment process.
Challenge
Carlo Gavazzi Automation (“Gavazzi”) is a global electronics group focused on the design, manufacturing and marketing of electronic equipment for industrial automation and information processing. Gavazzi relies on a centralized IT department, the heart of which is based on IBM Power Systems running the i operating system. Growing business requirements that demand a Web infrastructure have led Gavazzi to search for a solution that will help them Web-enable their existing enterprise 5250 applications while continuing to enjoy the application's code as the backbone of business methodology.
Solution
Gavazzi chose PHP to modernize their existing 5250 applications. Implementing PHP to Web-enable these applications improves both their response time and information consistency. Zend Solutions for IBM i offer Gavazzi reliable and readily-available PHP tools to integrate seamlessly with the many i applications that underpin their business operations. By integrating PHP and Zend Solutions for IBM i, Gavazzi Automation is able to leverage existing i application business methodologies, while reducing application development time and offering a user-friendly modernized Web interface.
Challenge
IGN Entertainment is a leading media company and division of Fox Interactive Media. IGN Entertainment's team at IGN community sites manages over 50 different community-based sites and has built an entirely new platform based on Zend Framework.Build a long-term platform using best practices and design patterns to enhance applications & performance for the IGN community sites network.
Solution
The IGN community sites team chose Zend Framework mainly for its modern, pick-and-choose style. They have built extensively upon it, extending and leveraging the work accomplished in the open-source Zend Framework community and they now plan on leveraging their new platform to build and manage a large number of new community-based sites for IGN Entertainment.
Challenge
Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a LAMP stack shop, using exclusively open-source based code, but also making use of key enabling tools from Zend, including Zend Studio for Eclipse and the web application server Zend Platform. Indianapolis Motor Speedway wanted faster performance of the sites they manage, and found other libraries too difficult to install, develop with, extend, & deploy.
Solution
Intitially Zend Framework was implemented on their Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix site
and the IMS team found that ZF gave them:
• Easy to modify, extend, and update object-oriented PHP 5 code
• A set of best design pattern practices for building their application
• An education (truly) on how to architect a best-of-breed PHP application
• Best of all, due to removal of a great deal of legacy and unnecessary code lead to page load times that increased over 20%!
Challenge
Fiat needed to quickly bring to market a single-sign-on portal for 1,800 dealers and 2,400 service centers (comprising over 42,000 users) to customize, order, and service Fiat vehicles in 17 countries across Europe. Integrating 15 disparate Fiat applications to communicate with their backend systems was a challenge in any language, but PHP proved to be the rapid turnaround, quick time-to-market "glue" language solution that enabled Fiat to accomplish their goals in short order and with cost savings over other solutions they considered.
Solution
Their Fiatlink system is built on PHP using Zend Core for Oracle with an SAP-RFC connector to their SAP ERP systems, Zend Studio toolkits for their developers, and replacement of their Java web server with a Zend Platform application server using Zend Java Bridge to continue to leverage a 2 person-year investment Fiat already had in Java code. Zend's application server Zend Platform provides a PHP Intelligence feature that helps Fiat track down slow queries to their backend database systems in real-time. They connect to many systems, including a dealer application still in operation, via the easy-to-use web services support that is native to PHP 5.
Challenge
In Ticketing is a full service ticket provider for events worldwide. In-Ticketing has grown rapidly, and needed to rebuild its online ticketing system to accommodate its growth and to enable additional up-sell transactions (often from third-party providers).
Solution
Working with Zend’s Consultants, In-Ticketing was able to leverage Zend Framework and Zend Platform and rebuild its entire ticketing platform. In addition, In-Ticketing’s new transaction engine leverages Zend platform controllers to enhance security and to enable third-party cross- and up-sell transactions.
Challenge
Founded in 2004, social networking website Tagged.com has grown rapidly to more than 60 million users. Tagged has to focus on a high-performing website with fast response times, even while the user base grows by the thousands every month.
Solution
Zend Platform’s smart code caching and performance diagnostics are helping Tagged achieve reliably high performance, even while the website scales and adds new users.Zend Studio is enabling teams of developers to work efficiently on a large, feature-rich code base.
Challenge
Bwin Games is a subsidiary of the bwin Group, the largest publicly traded gaming company in the world. Recent legislation in the U.S. outlawed the activity of online gambling. Consequently, bwin was forced to rapidly pursue other markets, which required complete re-engineering of the website, with internationalization as a top priority.
Solution
Within a 12-month period, bwin adapted and redesigned their English-only site to support multiple languages. Using Zend Framework and with Zend and the PHP community supporting them, bwin Games is now running a €100 million business in Europe that is growing and expanding into new countries every day.
Challenge
When deciding to build QEDWiki IBM had a few key requirements. They wanted the PHP components they built to be widely reused at IBM, they wanted to support multiple databases easily, it was quite important to build on a clean & reliable community-supported framework, and perhaps most importantly they did not want to reinvent the wheel by creating a new framework.
Solution
After looking at a number of other possible solutions, IBM opted for Zend Framework as a key component to build QEDWiki on. Stewart Nickolas, Lead Architect at IBM comments: “Our team saved much time and effort by using Zend Framework’s building blocks on our project. With so many Zend Framework community developers in so many different environments, the code is much cleaner and more reliable, with fewer bugs or defects.”
Challenge
In 2005 Right Media launched the
Right Media Exchange, in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online ad placements in real time through auctions. Right Media’s 19,000 customers needed a convenient and secure application to interact with the exchange to post ads, create inventory, bid and sell via auction, track results, and so forth. At first Right Media provided their customers a Windows-based desktop application to perform these tasks, but that solution turned out to be unworkable.
Solution
Using Zend Framework and PHP helped Right Media develop an easy to use, rich web application that solved these problems and could be used by all their customers.
Challenge
Consist has over 35 years of experience of deploying mission-critical IT solutions for some of the largest companies and public-sector organizations. Consist began planning for their migration from PHP4 to PHP5, which coincided with new architecture development for their Content Management product, and they saw a perfect opportunity to adopt a supported PHP5 distribution.
Solution
Using Zend Core, Consist was able to meet its long-term infrastructure goals: a trustworthy PHP distribution with a long-term commitment to development and stability that provided timely security updates, a single PHP foundation across development, staging, and production environments, reduction of maintenance costs to only 6 days per year and on-call support.
Challenge
Varien, in business since 2001, has been building e-commerce solutions for major clients for over half the lifetime of e-commerce on the web. Varien had their own homegrown, in-house framework and found themselves with a workable, but not optimal solution. Says Yoav Kutner, CTO at Varien, “We were happy with our framework, but the costs associated with training new developers were not worth it. We needed a professional framework which had support, would continue to evolve outside of our company, and had a strong community of developers already versed in the code.”
Solution
Varien chose to go with industry standard PHP 5 and the new open source Zend Framework to provide them with an extremely simple, object-oriented, and flexible solution that encapsulates best practices, agile & testing methodologies, and that would result in very rapid development of enterprise-grade web applications.
Challenge
Icony is a leader in the online dating business and has over 70 business partners. To sustain these alliances it was necessary for ICONY to develop its proprietary platform to allow their partners to easily integrate with ICONY’s data and functionality. ICONY needed to combine flexible extension support with an ever-expanding scope of potential functionalities.
Solution
ICONY is a business unit of Metropolis AG, a subsidiary of 21TORR. In 1999, 21TORR made the strategic decision and chose to use PHP and Zend Platform to develop their applications because of PHP’s portability, scalability, and short learning curve. Today due to ICONY’s in-depth PHP knowledge 21TORR has become an expert in developing and managing complex Web applications.
Challenge
BEAM.TV wanted to provide quick and easy web-based global services to the advertising and post-production industries to allow clients to collaborate on projects, deliver finished products to their customers, and archive their work on-line.
Solution
BEAM.TV realized they would benefit most from a technology that was as open and flexible as possible. To implement their site, BEAM.TV chose Zend Platform™ primarily for its caching and acceleration capabilities as well as its rapid prototyping, flexible deployment, XML and XSLT integration, session clustering, and minimal downtime.
Challenge
When building Verkkokauppa.com- a fully operational e-commerce site, the company wanted a solution that would allow their website to be easily updated with the latest material about their offerings. Since Verkkokauppa.com’s inventory changes constantly their application must reflect this dynamic state and accommodate the need to develop and update quickly. Verkkokauppa.com also wanted a fully-scalable answer to handle their ever-increasing customer requirements, and a maximum reliability application.
Solution
Choosing PHP to build their application the company was impressed with its functionality and the ease with which it allowed them to launch their site, Verkkokauppa.com used the Zend Studio as a proficient IDE for PHP. The code completion, code analyzer, CVS integration were especially useful during the various development stages and continue to benefit them today. Verkkokauppa.com also deployed the Zend Platform to manage performance and monitor their application. As an added bonus Zend Platform Performance Management maximized their ROI and minimized their operational expenditure.
Challenge
The Foundstone division of McAfee in Southern California focuses on vulnerability management for networks using PHP. For such a complex system in which PHP plays a critical role, it is absolutely necessary for McAfee to have excellent PHP developers. When recruiting PHP programmers for his own team, Plush, the Senior PHP Developer at Foundstone.McAfee found technical skills to often be lacking. Plush and his team needed someone who could “do it now.”
Solution
Zend Certified Engineers. Plush sees that with a Zend Certification diploma, the developer has committed himself to PHP. "When I see someone has Zend Certification, I know right away this person is serious. With Zend Certification, it proves that someone else has verified your PHP skills, and we can move on to other questions.”
Challenge
Ibuildings is a provider of content management systems (CMS), back-office integration, and Web applications and is based in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. Software development in PHP is one of Ibuildings' key areas of expertise. Qualified employees with PHP expertise are extremely important.
Solution
Ibuildings' employers insist on Zend PHP Certification for all its PHP developers. During the recruiting process, Zend PHP Certification is the best tool for identifying PHP experts. Ibuildings views Zend PHP Certification as an important step toward positioning PHP as a serious development platform. In order to meet the strong demand for qualified PHP developers, Zend brought together a group of recognized PHP experts in collaboration with the PHP Education Advisory Board in Fall 2004 to establish the Certification Program.
Challenge
The sueddeutsche.de website is constantly changing as news, ads and other content is removed and added. The company was having difficulty handling such a dynamic environment.
Solution
Sueddeutsche.de chose PHP in 1998 because of its flexibility and speed. Zend Platform monitors each PHP application, reporting each error with full contextual information. The powerful integration with Zend Studio then allows the developers to rapidly code and deploy a fix to the production environment.
Challenge
United Press International (UPI) is a leading provider of critical information to media outlets, businesses, governments and researchers worldwide. The company was using ColdFusion which was working well in regards to application development; however the company was having a difficult time with scalability and uptime.
Solution
UPI stopped using ColdFusion and turned to PHP 5 as their web application language and selected Zend’s products to get the job done. This change has allowed UPI to solve their scalability and uptime issues. The company switched to Zend solutions to ensure reliability and to reduce the probability of production error.
