PHP in Business

I read Stu Herbert’s post on his PHP blog this morning, talking about the business case for PHP and also questioning why there was no central resource answering some of those ‘Why PHP?’ questions. I agree with what Stu has to say about that and have often wondered the same. Having been in the position of really having to justify using PHP over other languages for projects, making a business case is often the hardest hill to climb; often this is because you (or me) as a developer are trying to put what is essentially a technical viewpoint/argument to someone who really doesn’t care about the nuts and bolts of the development - they want to know about good old ‘Return on Investment’!

If you take a moment to search the web for business cases for PHP use, you’ll more than likely find plenty of technical comparisons with other languages and discussions of their relative merits; you’ll find a lot less information put in business terms; essentially in the terms that the very people we try to convert to the merits of PHP and open source won’t necessarily understand.

Those who develop the language, and those who use it may argue that they are not the Microsofts et al of this world and so shouldn’t have to ’sell’ PHP in the same way as a commercially developed product; maybe they are right, maybe not though - and this is no critiscism! In the places I have worked PHP has been and continues to be used very successfully, providing excellent returns - but only due to a couple of important reasons: the case for PHP was well made and understood, and development of the projects was undertaken by developers who are real professionals.

Stuart round off his post by asking if there may be an interest in promoting the advantages of PHP in order to aid those who want to make a case for its use. Having been one who has promoted PHP’s use in the corporate environment, I for one would be interested!