Business development: the Zend approach
Zend the PHP company, on the 16th of january announced that Harold Goldberg has joined the company as CEO. Goldberg, coming from BMC where he was senior vice president of worldwide marketing, after one week into the job left an interview talking about his new position.
Goldberg in the interview with Computer Business Review said:
Although I’ve been in software for 20 years, I need to listen because there might be a different business model.
Very wise, indeed.
The company has still to set the next stage on how it will position itself and build an ecosystem, but Zend is already collaborating with Microsoft to enhance the experience of running the PHP scripting language on Windows Server.
Will Goldberg further develop the relationship with Microsoft?
Zend, promoting itself as “the” PHP company because two founders, Zeev Suraski and Gutmans, are key contributors to PHP, has the backing of the known venture capitalists.
Roberto Galoppini and 
Savio Rodrigues 12:23 am on February 1, 2007 Permalink
Hey Roberto, one of the reasons he said that is because he has no experience with open source. I found it surprising that he said that he didn’t see any open source competition during his time at BMC.
It’s also interesting that big open source companies like Zend are going out and getting traditional software talent (vs. folks with OSS experience).
Roberto Galoppini 12:57 am on February 1, 2007 Permalink
I agree Savio, it’s quiet weird indeed. My guess: customers move away and don’t speak loud about it.
Does it make any sense to you?
Yes, I agree, it’s interesting that commercial open source firms hire traditional managers, it’s definitely a sign of progress.