Thursday, February 10. 2005
Enterprise PHP Embarrassment
Thanks to fellow Serendipity user Norbert Mocsnick for pulling this roster of PHP users from Zend:“Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Lufthansa, Dresdner Bank, Disney Online, Yahoo!, Lycos, Sprint, T-Mobile, Orange, Nortel Networks, Lucent, WallStreetOnline and Siemens.”
This helps answer the question, “Who are the enterprise?” but raises another: “Where have they been?”
My experience so far has been that corporations keep plans to implement open source technology tightly guarded under non-disclosure agreements. Upon discovering I was, “an open source guy” a friend of a friend with a wink and a nudge disclosed to me that his company uses MySQL as the mainstay of their information gathering operations. Huge operations. Yet he’d throttle me if I disclosed the company name (a household word in IT).
Why the shame?
At least here in the USA, it seems that corporations are as embarrassed to admit to using open source technology as they are to outsourcing jobs. The mentality is almost as if PHP programmers are “stealing” jobs from ASP/JSP programmers, and MySQL is encroaching on the livelihood of good old Oracle admins. The perception that open source tools are somehow less expensive and therefore must be of lesser quality has to go. The cowboy coders and fly-by-night programming shops only exacerbate this perception.
In my career I have seen time and again that PHP, done right, is ready for the enterprise. When will the enterprise be ready for PHP? Imagine the day when a gathering of CEOs at a well-heeled luncheon are bragging about their, “1,000 node PHP 5 server farm backed by a 100 node MySQL 5 cluster”, slapping their senior PHP Quality Assurance Director on the back for keeping everything ship-shape, and sending their best people in droves to PHP Conferences with as much razzle and dazzle as Apple’s WWDC or Lotusphere.
Then we will know PHP has pulled the sword from the stone, and claimed its rightful place. Until then, we’ve got work to do.
In my career I have seen time and again that PHP, done right, is ready for the enterprise. When will the enterprise be ready for PHP? Imagine the day when a gathering of CEOs at a well-heeled luncheon are bragging about their, “1,000 node PHP 5 server farm backed by a 100 node MySQL 5 cluster”, slapping their senior PHP Quality Assurance Director on the back for keeping everything ship-shape, and sending their best people in droves to PHP Conferences with as much razzle and dazzle as Apple’s WWDC or Lotusphere.
Then we will know PHP has pulled the sword from the stone, and claimed its rightful place. Until then, we’ve got work to do.
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It’s because all of the open source sollutions that are not good enough, or insecure that give PHP such a bad name. And it’s because of all those scriptkiddies that go out and create web-applications at the age of 14 years old (there are a lot of older people that create crappy applications, but in this country it’s mostly the young people).
I think there are more [edit: unqualified people] writing php scripts than there are real profesional people that use php to create a sollution for their customer. Most of the times clients want me to write an application in ASP, and when I begin talking about PHP they get scared and tell me that PHP is insecure, too slow and not good enough for them. It costs me hours of time to convince them that I can do with PHP what other people can realize with asp or asp.net.
I hope PHP will pull out the sword from the stone stone. And I hope that one day the world will see the real power of PHP. Because when used on the right way and by the right people you can really create kick ass applications!
I think there are more [edit: unqualified people] writing php scripts than there are real profesional people that use php to create a sollution for their customer. Most of the times clients want me to write an application in ASP, and when I begin talking about PHP they get scared and tell me that PHP is insecure, too slow and not good enough for them. It costs me hours of time to convince them that I can do with PHP what other people can realize with asp or asp.net.
I hope PHP will pull out the sword from the stone stone. And I hope that one day the world will see the real power of PHP. Because when used on the right way and by the right people you can really create kick ass applications!
Thanks for your thoughts, Justed. I edited your post slightly — I don’t mind you saying PHP apps "kick ass" because they do — but no need to call people names. 
Happy to see The Netherlands just said no to software patents. I visited Amsterdam for the first time this Christmas, and am pleased to see it is not only a beautiful place but full of smart people.
Happy to see The Netherlands just said no to software patents. I visited Amsterdam for the first time this Christmas, and am pleased to see it is not only a beautiful place but full of smart people.
There’s truth to what you say about PHP being accessable to anyone regardless of expertise. This is both a bad and, more often, a good attribute of the language.
A related part of the problem is that IT schools are hung up on big commercial vendors as well. It stands to reason, for example, that if 100 schools are teaching ASP to every single school teaching PHP then the more formally trained people will be using ASP in ther professions. Certainly, this is an area that the PHP community needs to focus on as well.
A related part of the problem is that IT schools are hung up on big commercial vendors as well. It stands to reason, for example, that if 100 schools are teaching ASP to every single school teaching PHP then the more formally trained people will be using ASP in ther professions. Certainly, this is an area that the PHP community needs to focus on as well.
One of the problems I’ve found is that as the old adage goes "No CIO ever got fired for buying IBM".
There’s a risk-reward question involved, and most large companies are risk averse. In my days as an IT exec, I was also concerned about how to make enterprise data truly an asset for the enterprise, and my solution was to have one database vendor and make sure that every system used that database. This frequently brought me into conflict with department heads who wanted their "cool department centric" application, which happened to use some proprietary database format, or only worked with
My stance was always: if it’s company data, then somewhere down the road we will want to perhaps add that to a datamart or join it to data that is in the ERP there’s a simple way to do that.
From that point of view mysql still has a way to go before it has all the Enterprise database features of Oracle. I suppose that is also the same dynamic that keeps the Microsoft shops firmly entrenched in ASP/.NET/MSSQL server… and makes any alternatives a hard sell.
There’s a risk-reward question involved, and most large companies are risk averse. In my days as an IT exec, I was also concerned about how to make enterprise data truly an asset for the enterprise, and my solution was to have one database vendor and make sure that every system used that database. This frequently brought me into conflict with department heads who wanted their "cool department centric" application, which happened to use some proprietary database format, or only worked with
My stance was always: if it’s company data, then somewhere down the road we will want to perhaps add that to a datamart or join it to data that is in the ERP there’s a simple way to do that.
From that point of view mysql still has a way to go before it has all the Enterprise database features of Oracle. I suppose that is also the same dynamic that keeps the Microsoft shops firmly entrenched in ASP/.NET/MSSQL server… and makes any alternatives a hard sell.
So what you say is that when I offer a PHP sollution to a customer it’s better to tell him that it will take 6 months of work, and ask a lot more money for the application I will be writing for him? 
I have got no problem with that, if customers take me more serious that way than I only have to work 2 months out of 6 hehe
In the country I live in (the Netherlands) PHP is accepted more and more. A lot of big company’s are writing IT sollutions just with PHP en mySQL (or postgreSQL). This is because the biggest web-community websites in dutch are written with PHP (like tweakers.net) and a lot of IT people are frequently visiting this kind of sites, so they know that PHP can be very powerfull, if used in the right way.
And if I look at jobbingmalls on the internet I see that company’s from the uk who are looking for php developers are paying 10 times as much as here in the Netherlands, so I guess they are taking PHP a big more serious than over here. I think that is a good development, and hope other companys will follow.
By the way, a few days ago I heard about an IT school here in the Netherlands that is teaching PHP to their students hurray !!
I have got no problem with that, if customers take me more serious that way than I only have to work 2 months out of 6 hehe
In the country I live in (the Netherlands) PHP is accepted more and more. A lot of big company’s are writing IT sollutions just with PHP en mySQL (or postgreSQL). This is because the biggest web-community websites in dutch are written with PHP (like tweakers.net) and a lot of IT people are frequently visiting this kind of sites, so they know that PHP can be very powerfull, if used in the right way.
And if I look at jobbingmalls on the internet I see that company’s from the uk who are looking for php developers are paying 10 times as much as here in the Netherlands, so I guess they are taking PHP a big more serious than over here. I think that is a good development, and hope other companys will follow.
By the way, a few days ago I heard about an IT school here in the Netherlands that is teaching PHP to their students
hurray !!Thanks for the good news, Justed. In my experience Europe has always been way ahead of the USA in realizing the full potential of open source technologies like PHP. I think part of this is that countries in the EU do not want to be beholden to a large American firm like Microsoft. Many Americans simply don’t realize there are alternatives to living in the long shadow of FUD.
hi i live in india and there are a few reputed colleges that have included PHP in their curriculam.Also some of the state govenrment in india have put a rule to use only open source software for their use.There is a community in chennai to promote LAMP and it provides free-traning on PHP every sunday.
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing this, Karthik.
The conflation of outsourcing and open source adds a unique dimension to this issue here in America. That there are very talented programmers in other countries like India that can be hired for a fraction of the cost of hiring a domestic programmer (due to the exchange rate) seems equally as difficult to believe as the existence of powerful, robust software that is free.
The conflation of outsourcing and open source adds a unique dimension to this issue here in America. That there are very talented programmers in other countries like India that can be hired for a fraction of the cost of hiring a domestic programmer (due to the exchange rate) seems equally as difficult to believe as the existence of powerful, robust software that is free.
My theory is that PHP is too cheap. Large companies are used to call for submissions when they need an application. They are used to be told: "It will cost 30 000$ and will be ready in 6 months." On the other side, PHP solutions propose a quarter of the price and development time. Companies just don’t take it seriously.
From what I’ve seen, PHP usually gets in from the back door. Employes who need to perform a certain task and know a little of PHP simply use it to solve their own problem quickly. The company’s CEO does not know about it. The superviser probably does not even know it’s PHP, he only knows it solved a problem. I’m pretty sure all large IT companies use PHP somewhere without knowledge of it. It might only be a form to fill a database used by two guys somewhere.
From what I’ve seen, PHP usually gets in from the back door. Employes who need to perform a certain task and know a little of PHP simply use it to solve their own problem quickly. The company’s CEO does not know about it. The superviser probably does not even know it’s PHP, he only knows it solved a problem. I’m pretty sure all large IT companies use PHP somewhere without knowledge of it. It might only be a form to fill a database used by two guys somewhere.
I enjoyed this article so much! So much that i wanted to visit your homepage … but Mr.Peake, where art thou homepage button?
Nice logo there too btw
Nice logo there too btw
Well, if you click on "All Categories" you will get the main page of this site. It actually is my new homepage. You can see previous versions at the bottom of the lefthand navigation under "Old Sites (Archive)".
I decided to go blog-centric as a way of consolidating some of my other sites (like peakepoems.com and elements of peakepro.com) into one site, using blog entries to catalog information like published poems and articles as well as my thoughts on a variety of topics. So, if you like what you see please click on the orange XML buttons at left to subscribe to a particular feed, or if you want to stalk me and hear about everything I blog click the xml feeds at right to get all the categories in your format of choice. I use NetNewsWire as my RSS reader; there are many other good ones as well these days.
The logo was fun — I decided to use a medieval labyrinth design because to me it also kind of looks like a brain, and this site is a kind of brain dump for me. I also like that it simultaneously seems chaotic yet is in fact very ordered and is a meditation tool used to "unwind" (best way I could put it).
Thanks for the nice feedback!
I decided to go blog-centric as a way of consolidating some of my other sites (like peakepoems.com and elements of peakepro.com) into one site, using blog entries to catalog information like published poems and articles as well as my thoughts on a variety of topics. So, if you like what you see please click on the orange XML buttons at left to subscribe to a particular feed, or if you want to stalk me and hear about everything I blog click the xml feeds at right to get all the categories in your format of choice. I use NetNewsWire as my RSS reader; there are many other good ones as well these days.
The logo was fun — I decided to use a medieval labyrinth design because to me it also kind of looks like a brain, and this site is a kind of brain dump for me. I also like that it simultaneously seems chaotic yet is in fact very ordered and is a meditation tool used to "unwind" (best way I could put it).
Thanks for the nice feedback!
