Recent surveys by Gartner and Accenture speak of the phenomenal growth of open source in the enterprise. We have witnessed this in the PHP world as well:

• The number of organisations migrating their legacy technologies to PHP
• Growing number of enterprise-ready packages/platforms based on PHP (Magento, SugarCRM, etc)
• The strength of the PHP community
• The number of companies recruiting for PHP developers in the UK.

There is no doubt that PHP has become a very powerful and mature development platform, which companies are embracing for large-scale, mission-critical applications.

Yesterday was an incredible day for Ibuildings. I have never experienced anything like it before. Never expected or anticipated so much talk, chat and blogging on one person's move from one company to another. I knew that Cal Evans was popular in the community, but didn't realise fully what a celebrity he is. Wow... what an incredible addition to our team..

I saw Cal present in a London PHP seminar 2 years ago. Even though it was very techie and well above my head, I could see how everyone in the audience was captivated and mesmerised by his incredible presentation skills, confidence and lovely interaction with the audience. At that conference, I realised for the first time what an incredible following one language could have. I have been involved with many languages in my life, but never witnessed such admiration and fanatical adulation of a programming language. The more I explored, the more fanatics I found, the wider the community and the more passionate the supporters.