According to a new article on InfoWorld today, Zend and IBM are working together to extend the reach of their combined technologies even further by focusing on more functionality around IBM's DB2 database.

Featured in the arrangement are enhanced IBM DB2 Express-C capabilities in IBM Zend Core for IBM, which is Zend's PHP offering. DB2 Express-C is IBM's hybrid relational-XML data server for accessing enterprise capabilities such as data replication, clustering and offsite disaster recovery.

Also included is new support for DB2 Connect technology to access i5/PS and z/OS DB2 data servers. DB2 Connect technology makes it easy to build PHP applications that leverage DB2 hosted on IBM System z and System i servers.

The article also mentions how users can use existing System i Linux partitions, System i BladeCenter and System x servers to take advantage of this new functionality. Zend will be providing the support for this new product (a "single support solution").