Yesterday, Zend won Israel Venture Association (IVA) and Red Herring's Best Software Startup award for the year 2006. Those of you who know the Israeli hitech landscape can understand what an amazing feat this is; For those who don't, Zend (and two other startups in other hitech areas) won out of a list of 400 nominees, which in turn are only a small fraction of the startups in the country. Israel has the highest concentration of startups in the world, second only to the Silicon Valley. So, the fact Zend won is pretty amazing and a great honor for all of the team.

Zeev shares his own thoughts on the occasion, noting that he believes it's really the testament of PHP's success, it's growth, and powerful features that pushed Zend over the top to win.

Many congratulations to all of those at Zend!

The even is sponsored by the Israel Venture Association and includes other finalists like: Amimon, Discretix, Deep Breeze, Mazor Surgical Technologies, and Itemfield.

For more information, you can check out this month's edition (on stands June 19th) of Red Herring.