zend developer pulse - Zend Technologies

ZEND DEVELOPER PULSE™ Taking the Pulse of the Developer Community Summer 2012

DEVELOPERS AND THE APP ECONOMY

To our readers . . . Last year, we created Zend Developer Pulse™ in order to ‘take the pulse’ of developers who create software, one of the most innovative and fastest-growing industries in the world today. Zend is blessed to work with a vibrant community of 5 million PHP developers worldwide, enabling us to field a survey with more than 3,000 responses. This time, our community helped us unearth important information on how PHP applications are being used in the cloud. We are pleased to share with you a summary of survey findings in the report that follows. If you are not already familiar with Zend, we are the leading provider of solutions to build and deploy business-critical web applications using PHP, which powers more than one-third of the web and provides foundational technology for such widely-used commercial apps as Drupal, Facebook, Magento, Wikipedia, WordPress and Zynga. Zend serves a customer base of 40,000 clients, who are building enterprise applications at Best Buy, Bell Helicopter, eBay, France Telecom, NYSE Euronext, United Business Media and other many organizations.

Thank you for your time. We welcome your feedback as we begin planning our next survey.

Andi Gutmans CEO and co-founder Zend Technologies

Zend Developer Pulse™ Survey INTRODUCTION Developers and the App Economy As an increasing number of enterprises adopt the cloud, PHP is gaining prominence as a cloud-application development language of choice. This year’s survey shows that developers prefer PHP for its ease of use and their ability to develop quickly using PHP, among other reasons. More than half the developers surveyed also indicated that the apps they are developing today are destined to be deployed in cloud environments. The combination of speed and ease of use enables developers to build and deploy PHP-based cloud applications quickly. This, in turn, drives competitive advantages for enterprises. Using the PHP language along with the benefits of a cloud environment saves time and enables companies to harness an accelerated development cycle. In today’s computing environment, cloud and mobile applications are evolving more rapidly than ever, making the PHP and the cloud a powerful combination. From first-mover advantages to ongoing product innovation, PHP and the cloud are an ideal combination for up-leveling companies’ competitive advantages. The adoption of the PHP language and cloud is becoming pervasive for enterprise applications. That said, our survey has uncovered a need for professionalization within the corporate PHP development environment. To their credit, PHP development organizations are already strong at keeping up with the latest versions of the language. Some core processes and best practices, such as the usage of version control and frameworks, are standard. However, other pivotal processes, such as bug tracking, application level-monitoring and automation of core development functions, are not nearly as broadly adopted. Because PHP is being used to develop and deploy business-critical applications, development organizations must proactively fill the gap between pervasive use and professionalization.

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DEVELOPING IN AND FOR THE CLOUD More and more enterprises are running cloud-based applications and, as our first Zend Developer Pulse survey proved, most developers were already considering how to develop for the cloud. The first survey, released during Q4 2011, found that 61% of developers intended to develop to the public cloud. In general, developers had a high desire to further their skills in developing for the cloud, with just under half declaring cloud development as a skills enhancement focus for them in 2012. In order to dig more deeply into how developers were using the cloud, our most recent survey asked developers whether the apps they were currently working on would be deployed to the cloud or not. Sixty-three percent of developers expect at least a section of their current apps in development to be deployed to cloud environments. This validated the finding from the previous study, in which the majority of developers intended to develop apps that will run in the cloud. Moreover, 1 in 10 developers expect all of the apps they are currently working on to be deployed in public or private cloud environments. Fifteen percent expect more than half of their apps to be deployed to the cloud, and another 18 percent expect a deployment proportion ranging from 10-50 percent. Only one quarter of respondents (26 percent) do not expect any of their apps currently in development to be cloud-based. An interesting thing to note is that the data is consistent across company sizes. Like their small-business counterparts, 10 percent of developers in larger corporations (more than 5,000 employees) said that everything they are developing is going to be deployed to either private or public cloud. For the apps you are developing ... What proportion do you expect to be deployed to either private or public cloud?

11%

Deploying Apps to Cloud (63%)

11%

Everything I’m developing

15% 26%

More than half of my apps 10-49% Less than 10%

18% 19%

Not Yet Deploying to Cloud (37%) None of them I don't know

Base: 3,035 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwide Source: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

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Cloud-Based Services and APIs While it’s clear that the apps currently in development are being programmed to run well on an elastic cloud environment, we wanted to know specifically how developers are engineering their apps within the cloud. We asked developers whether the apps they are designing are taking advantage of cloud-based services and APIs. 4

Zend Developer Pulse™ | © 2012 Zend Technologies

APIs Go Mainstream The survey found that 72 percent of developers are already using cloud-based services or APIs as a part of the applications they are designing today. This indicates that developers have a fairly sophisticated understanding that today’s apps have APIs at their core, pulling data from multiple sources and enabling collaboration within and outside of the enterprise.

Usage of cloud based services & APIs 11%

WHAT IS AN API? An API—or Application Programming Interface—allows products or services to talk to other products or services. In this way, an API allows you to open up data and functionality to other developers and to other businesses. It is increasingly the way in which companies exchange data and services, both internally and externally. Source: Kin Lane, API Evangelist, API Evangelist

Don't know

17% Don't use

72% Use cloud services/APIs


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Within the 72 percent of developers using cloud-based services and APIs today, one quarter (24 percent) are using APIs aggressively for more than half of their applications in development. Another 36 percent are using APIs in up to half their applications. Of those using cloud services and APIs, only 30 percent are only moderately approaching the integration of APIs into their applications.

What percent of your apps do you expect to use cloud based services or APIs? 10% All of them

30% Less than 10%

24% More than half of my apps

36%

10-49%

Base: 2,185 enterprise, SMB and independent developers who use cloud services or APIs Source: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

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DEVELOPMENT PROCESS The survey’s second area of investigation involved scoping the level of sophistication and automation in PHP development processes today. PHP is becoming an increasingly important part of corporate development in larger companies, often for business-critical applications. Executives and decisionmakers must increasingly focus on the level of sophistication and quality of the development process for PHP apps. A recent report by UBM TechWeb, which asked development decision-makers about their primary app development goals, demonstrated this new priority. Forty percent of decision-makers surveyed said their primary goal was to deliver higher quality applications. An additional 25 percent sought to improve the user experience.

A Focus on Quality in Development In order to better understand the role that quality plays within the development process, we asked PHP developers whether they are staying up to date with the latest versions of the open source PHP language. This question was based on the assumption that organizations benefit by keeping their PHP versions and stacks up to date and streamlined. Not only does this help organizations stay efficient, but it enables them to better manage security updates and patches, as well as take advantage of the latest frameworks and reusable components from the community. The survey found that 80 percent of developers were already on PHP 5.3, while another eight percent intend to be within 6-12 months. This means that the majority of developers will be using PHP 5.3 or beyond by end of 2012 — an impressive statistic, considering PHP 5.3 was the most recent version until just before the survey was fielded. In addition, only 14 percent of developers claim to be on versions older than 5.2.

“Many organizations and developers are accomplishing important tasks with PHP, with many critical applications already built and deployed on PHP. For instance, in our survey, 60 percent described their PHP applications as revenue generating , or critical in nature, while only 15 percent described them as being used for non-critical purposes. “ What is the most important goal for your application development process?

Base: UBM TechWeb. The State of PHP in the Enterprise, June 2012 Source: 117 IT Managers & Decision Makers who are actively using PHP in their organizations

What version of PHP are you developing in? Currently Use Will use soon (6-12 months) Do not Use

88% 80%

PHP 5.3

50% 45%

PHP 5.2

8%

5%

17% 14% 3%

Older Versions 0%

10%

12%

50%

83% 20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


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PHP version 5.4, while only recently released, already shows widespread adoption. 75 percent of developers indicated that they are either using (22 percent) or considering (53 percent) PHP 5.4 within the next 6-12 months. These results demonstrate that PHP developers put a significant focus on maintaining their skills and coding within the latest versions. PHP 5.4 is an especially beneficial upgrade and contains major enhancements aimed at code quality, developer productivity, resource utilization and internationalization support. Features and functionalities include new language syntax, improved performance, support for multibyte languages and a built-in webserver. PHP 5.4 Usage (Released March 2012) Currently Use Will use soon (6-12 months) Do not Use

75% 22%

PHP 5.4

0%

10%

53%

20%

30%

40%

50%

25%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


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“PHP 5.4 is a major step forward for PHP. The lower memory footprint and improved performance of the Zend Engine enable PHP apps to serve a larger amount of concurrent cloud-connected mobile and desktop devices. The latest PHP enhancements also significantly improve its elegance while removing deprecated functionality, resulting in a dramatic optimization of the runtime. As PHP developers take advantage of PHP 5.4, the benefits will be realized in new web, mobile and social apps deployed on-premise or in the cloud.” Zeev Suraski, Chief Technology Officer, Zend Technologies

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Development Tools & Best Practices The next topic the survey investigated was how development organizations use various tools to assist with efficiency and bring forward best practices. Our goal was to measure how pervasive different softwares and processes are within PHP development teams. To more precisely address this question, we excluded responses from independent contractors and focused exclusively on corporate developers. Certain technologies were found to be widely adopted. For example, although the use of and choice of Integrated Development Environment (IDE) can be a subject of passionate debate among developers, this survey validated that the overwhelming majority (85 percent) of corporate developers are using one. Likewise, version control has also been widely adopted among the developer community, with 81 percent using or intending to use it. Usage of common tools & software 100% 90% 80% 70% 60%

Intend to use within 12 months

5%

10%

Use now

12% 85%

81%

50%

19% 75% 59%

40%

26%

30%

26%

20%

22%

10% 0% IDEs

Version Control

Application frameworks

Bug tracking software

19%

24% 14%

Application level Continuous Agile development monitoring Integration tools tools

Base: 2,406 corporate developers worldwide (excludes independent developers) Source: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

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75 percent of corporate developers are using at least one application framework, a heartening statistic given the quality and security benefits of frameworks. Of the 25 percent not currently using frameworks, nearly half intend to adopt one within the next 12 months. It is interesting to note the difference between these results and those uncovered by the recent UBM TechWeb decision-maker survey, which found that 42 percent of development managers and executives did not believe their teams to be using a framework. Whether this means that development executives do not have full information on the tools their IT teams are using, or that individual developers are making decisions independent of a top-down structure, remains to be tested at a future point.

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Perhaps the most interesting finding in this section of the survey covers the tools that are not yet widely adopted. Within a corporate environment, 41 percent of participants answered that their teams do not yet use bug tracking software, a concerning statistic. Likewise, application monitoring, now considered a mainstay for corporate application servers in Java and other environments, has not yet been adopted by 78 percent of PHP development teams. Only 22 percent of development teams are implementing application level monitoring today. We would expect that as corporate teams focus more on the business-critical nature of their PHP applications, adoption of application-level monitoring will increase. This projection is reflected in the 26 percent of developers who intend to adopt this capability within the next 12 months, effectively doubling the usage of PHP application monitoring in the near term. Lastly, although PHP is known to enable teams to develop faster, it is interesting that only 14 percent of developers have seen the need or the opportunity to implement agile development tools. Do you (or your development team) use any of the following? Use now

Intend to use within 12 months

No intent to use

IDEs (such as Eclipse PDT, PhpStorm, NetBeans, Zend Studio)

85%

5%

10%

Version control (such as CVS, Git/GitHub, SVN)

81%

10%

8%

Application frameworks (such as Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symfony)

75%

12%

13%

Bug tracking software (such as Bugzilla, JIRA, Mantis)

59%

19%

22%

Application level monitoring (such as Zend Server, New Relic)

22%

26%

52%

Continuous Integration tools (such as Hudson, Jenkins, CruiseControl)

19%

26%

56%

Agile development tools (such as AgileZen)

14%

24%

62%

Base: 2,406 corporate developers worldwide (excludes independent developers) Source: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

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Stack Consistency & Management The final efficiency-themed question we posed development teams covered the work involved in maintaining a full PHP stack, including patching, supporting and managing updates. Because of the work involved in maintaining multiple stacks, organizations gain clear advantages by reducing their number of stacks. Here, the good news is that more than half of corporate development teams have only one PHP stack in production. Twenty-eight percent have the same stack across development and production, while 27 percent have multiple stacks in development, but only one in production. On the other hand, one quarter of development teams struggle with the cost of maintaining multiple stacks in development and production. Seven percent and 6 percent of developers, respectively, admit either to a situation where every developer is different or to complete chaos! How many PHP stacks does your organization use? 3%

I don't know

6%

Complete chaos!

7%

4%

It's complicated

28% One: same across development and production

Every developer is different

25% Multiple stacks in development and one in production

27% Two: one for development and one for production Base: 2,406 corporate developers worldwide (excludes independent developers) Source: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

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Automation of Key Development Processes Automation is desired within development and operations teams. It can reduce the human error involved in core processes, such as passing an application from development to testing and production. In addition, automation can automatically detect errors in an application and even route them to bug tracking and management systems as needed. In the bigger picture, automation saves valuable developer hours, which can be put towards coding and new application updates. However, the survey found that even within large enterprises of over 1,000 employees, automation has a low adoption rate to date. Only 42 percent of developers at large companies said their application deployment process is automated. Thirty-nine percent of developers have automated their error detection and application monitoring. Fewer than 30 percent use automation for unit testing, performance, system testing and server provisioning. Clearly, these areas pose opportunities for PHP development teams to save both time and energy by considering the option of more automation throughout the development cycle. Which of the following processes are automated in your company? Application deployment Application monitoring/ error detection

29% 31%

Unit Testing

22%

Load & performance testing

17%

System testing

38% 42% 39% 39% Small to mid sized companies (less than 1,000 employees)

28%

Large Companies (over 1,000 employees)

24%

18% 19%

Server provisioning

35% 34%

None of the above 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Base: 2,406 corporate deveopers worldwide (excludes independent developers) Source: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

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PHP Growth & Adoption The final question the survey posed asked the 3,035 participants why they believe that PHP has grown so rapidly over the last decade. Two-thirds of PHP developers extoled PHP for being easy to learn and affording the ability to create code faster. Developers also value that PHP is open source, its community, and the availability of frameworks. Why do you think the adoption of PHP has grown so rapidly? (select all that apply) PHP is easy to learn

72%

I can get things done faster in PHP

68%

Because PHP is open source

63%

The great PHP Community

61%

Availability of application frameworks

53%

More companies are using PHP for new projects

36%

PHP is easy to use for cloud and mobile apps

19% 10%

Other 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%


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It is interesting to note the similarities of these results to the recent UBM TechWeb manager and executive survey. Clearly, the many benefits of PHP — faster speed of development, easier learning curve, an open-source community and frameworks to leverage — are felt by both developers and their management teams. Developers

Decision Makers

Why has PHP grown so fast?

Why did you choose PHP ? (for your development team)

1. Easy to Learn

1. Speed of development

2. Speed of development

2. Open Source

3. Open Source

3. Widely Available Talent Pool

4. Great Community

4. Easy to Learn

5. Availability of Application Frameworks

5. Availability of Application Frameworks

Source: Zend Developer Pulse™: Developers and the App Economy, Second Quarter 2012

Source: UBM TechWeb, The State of PHP in the Enterprise, June 2012

Base: 3,035 enterprise, SMB and independent developers

Base: 232 IT Managers and decision makers

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ON THE LIGHTER SIDE Developers and Beer – A Perfect Match To truly take the pulse of developers, you have to consider the things the PHP development community cares about passionately, beyond just coding. During our previous survey, we asked about developers’ music choices. We found that 86 percent of developers listen to music while they code. Metallica, Pink Floyd and Linkin Park are top bands to code to. During this year’s survey, we approached the important topic of beer. We found that the bulk of developers rate themselves as some type of beer lover, with nearly one third (29 percent) of developers saying that they “live for it.” One in ten developers said they are home brewers. How do you feel about beer? (select all that apply) 45%

40%

39%

40%

“Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.”

35% 30%

29%

Henry Lawson

25% 20%

12%

15%

12%

10%

6%

5% 0% I live for it

My drink of preference I’m a home brewer "BEER LOVERS"

One of several things I drink nk

Not my drink of choice

"TAKE IT OR LEAVEE IT"

I hate the stuff

"NOT A FAN"


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Developers Weigh in – The Top 5 Preferred Beers

Favorite Brand of Beer 1

Heineken

2

Guinness

3

Budweiser

4

Stella Artois

5

Corona

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ABOUT ZEND DEVELOPER PULSE™ Zend is keenly focused on serving the developer community. This is reflected in our roles as an innovator and contributor to the PHP language, a commercial solutions provider, a contributor and supporter of Zend Framework, the creator of phpcloud.com and the host of the annual ZendCon event for the PHP community. We created the Zend Developer Pulse™ as a series of surveys that take the pulse of developers to understand their evolving work and career interests, challenges and needs.

ABOUT ZEND TECHNOLOGIES Zend is the leading provider of software and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical applications in PHP, which runs more than onethird of the world’s Web sites. Zend’s industry-leading PHP solutions, including Zend Server and Zend Studio, are deployed at more than 40,000 companies worldwide, providing a comprehensive solution for the entire application lifecycle. Learn more at www.zend.com.

LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS This report is the intellectual property of Zend Technologies Ltd., and is subject to copyright restrictions. The Zend Developer Pulse Report (“Report”) is provided to authorized companies and individuals (“Licensees”) only. Licensees are allowed to use the Report for internal research, and are also allowed to reproduce the data in whole or in part in the Licensees’ own publications, which can include but are not limited to reports, blogs, articles, data sheets and white papers (“Derivative Works”), with the following restrictions: • Data in the Report may not be sold either in whole or in part. • The Report may not be distributed to third parties without Zend’s written consent. • When data from the Report is used in Derivative Works, the data must be attributed to the “Zend Developer Pulse Report.” • The licensee agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Zend with regard to the accuracy and suitability of the Report for any purposes whatsoever.

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