Japan-based Turbolinux has signed a deal with Zend Technologies to further deployment of PHP on Linux solutions in key Asian markets, including China.

The partnership between Turbolinux and Zend marks the first time that Zend Technologies has contracted for an exclusive alliance in Asia; one that includes the rapidly growing markets of China and India.

Under the terms of the contract negotiations concluded on April 1, 2006, Turbolinux will serve as the exclusive distributor for Zend applications in Japan, and will also participate in a distribution partnership in China and India.

"Zend Technologies is a pioneer of PHP, the popular web scripting language that has been deployed on more than twenty-two million websites to date," said Koichi Yano, president and CEO of Turbolinux, Inc. "Through this partnership, Turbolinux will further leverage its position as an innovative IT leader by facilitating the use of best-of-breed PHP platform and products and expanding the open source market in Japan, China and India."

Offered to users free of charge, the PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a programming language primarily used for developing web-based software applications. Included in most Linux computing platforms, including Turbolinux, PHP continues to gain momentum in open source communities.

Additionally, Zend Technologies provides commercial products for development and operation of professional PHP applications, as well as consulting and education services to help companies be successful with their PHP initiatives.

"The growing momentum for PHP in Japan, China and India is evidenced daily by the increasing amount of sales and service opportunities for Zend in the region," said Doron Gerstel, CEO and president of Zend Technologies. "The partnership with Turbolinux accelerates our ability to service customers professionally and to help the adoption of PHP as the corporate standard for modern web application development."