Taking the Pulse of the Developer Community

DEVELOPERS AND THE APP ECONOMY

ZEND DEVELOPER PULSE™

Second Quarter 2013

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To our readers . . .

Just over a year ago, we created Zend Developer Pulse™ to ‘take the pulse’ of developers who are driving

the next generation of enterprise applications. With a development community of more than five million

PHP developers worldwide, Zend is in a unique position to tap into this large developer base, exploring

the current and future trends that are driving the mobile-first approach to application development in

today’s burgeoning “App Economy.”

Nearly 5,000 developers responded to our survey. The survey unearthed important information about

the adoption of open standards, along with key trends in DevOps, mobile development and cloud. We

are pleased to share with you a summary of findings in the report that follows.

If you are not already familiar with Zend, we help companies develop and deliver mobile- and Web

applications rapidly and with high-quality results. Zend helped establish the PHP language, and today we

serve a significant community that develops over 200 million applications and websites. Zend’s flagship

offering, Zend Server, is the leading application platform for developing, deploying and managing

mobile- and Web apps written in PHP, both on-premise and in the cloud. We serve a customer base of

40,000 clients, including such great companies as NYSE Euronext, BNP Paribas, Bell Helicopter, France

Telecom and other leading brands.

Thank you for your time. We welcome your feedback as we begin planning our next survey.

Andi Gutmans

CEO and co-founder

Zend Technologies

3

INTRODuCTION

Zend Developer Pulse™ Survey

Mobile applications are rapidly becoming the primary focus of corporate application development teams. Apps are the driving force for companies adopting a mobile-first strategy. This point is clearly reflected in this year’s survey results, particularly in comparison with last year’s survey.

In our previous survey in late 2011, we asked developers whether they intended to work on mobile applications during 2012, and the response was that 66% intended to. In contrast, this year’s survey found that a full 91% of application developers plan to deliver content and services to a mobile audience. This strength of focus on mobile apps was reflected across all company sizes.

It is not surprising to see that all kinds of developers are seeing an increased focus on mobile applications, given that mobile apps are a top priority for CIOs. Forbes recently published statistics showing that 71% of companies are considering developing custom mobile applications to meet their internal needs.

MOBILE FIRST: THE NEW STANDARD FOR THE APP ECONOMY

Developers and the App EconomyThanks to the massive adoption of smartphones and the general consumerization of IT, we now live in an “App Economy,” where applications have become the new face of a business to customers, employees and partners.

For this edition of Developer Pulse, we decided to look at some of the key factors that affect the ability of companies to deliver these kinds of customer engagement applications. We consider how broad the mobile-first approach to application development has become. We also explore the adoption of open standards, survey frequent DevOps challenges and find out about the most common cloud choices.

IDC predicts that by 2015, more people will access the Internet through a smartphone than a desktophttp://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219932/Most_will_access_Internet_via_mobile_devices_by_2015_IDC_says.

“By 2015, mobile app development projects will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-1,” Vertic projects http://www.vertic.com/blog/year_of_the_enterprise_tablet_infographic/.

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Percent of developers working on mobile applications

Base: 3,335 (in 2012) and 4,809 (in 2013) enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2011 and 2013

2012 2013

66%

91%80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

100%

Zend Developer Pulse™ | © 2013 Zend Technologies4

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Our recent Developer Pulse survey, published in the summer of 2012, also found that the 72% of PHP developers were already using an API-based architecture to develop applications. For this year’s survey, we probed more deeply into the exact server-side capabilities developers anticipated needing for their mobile apps. Interestingly, 89% of developers surveyed were able to articulate a point of view on the specific server-side capabilities they required.

The top capabilities that developers intend to deploy are outlined on the following chart. The leading capability is geo-locational support, closely followed by native push notifications.

We are now beyond the mobile adoption stage and into the mobile-first era for application development. This has been driven by the consumerization of IT, where workers populated enterprise IT operations with consumer mobile devices and apps. Today, the mobile market has grown so much that it is driving the entire IT industry. According to IDC: “Sales of smart mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – will grow by 20%, generate 20% of all IT sales and drive 57% of all IT market growth. Without smart mobile devices, IT industry growth would be just 2.9%.”

http://www.idc.com/research/Predictions13/downloadable/238044.pdf

Percent of developers (by company size) planning to work on mobile apps in 2013

Base: 4,809 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

Independent developers 2-100 employees 101-1000 employees 1001-5000 employees 5000+ employees

91% 91% 91%83%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

20%

10%

30%

0%

100%

90%

Percent of developers who can de�ne the back-end capabilties they plan to implement for mobile apps

Base: 4,809 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

Don't know

76%

24%

Can de�ne

5

THE ADOPTION OF OPEN STANDARDS FOR MOBILE DEVELOPMENT

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A recent subject of some debate has been the relative adoption of HTML5 and open standards for the development of mobile applications, as compared to native development on the iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Open standards enable companies to easily target multiple devices with their in-house Web developers. A native development approach, on the other hand, presents the challenge of needing to develop to multiple OS platforms.

There is a point of view in the market that open Web standards like HTML5 and JavaScript have the opportunity to unify mobile application development, just like they unified Web development for the desktop.

In fact, this year’s survey proved that open standards are already the developers’ first choice.

Our survey found that 79% of developers said they are already using HTML5 and open Web standards.

HTML5 is also a popular choice for companies needing multiple-platform support. Another recent developer study by Kendo uI found that only 15 percent of developers would go native when building an app that must perform on multiple platforms. It would appear that the debate over whether or not HTML5 will become standard is just about over, particularly in the PHP community.

If you're building or planning to build mobile applications in 2013, which of the following server-side capabilities would you need? (Select all that apply)

Base: 4,213 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

Interoperability with social platforms

37%

API versioning

39%

Client/Server data mapping

45%

Geo-location support

49%

Native push noti�cation

44%50%

40%

20%

10%

30%

0%

60%

THE NATuRE OF THE DEBATE: WHY OPEN STANDARDS?

Each native app has its own associated language and framework. iOS apps use Objective-C, Android and Blackberry apps run on Java, and Windows Phone uses .NET and Visual Studio. using HTML5 and JavaScript, developers can build Web apps with core capabilities that run across platforms, yet tap into native capabilities of various devices. Open standards are more efficient and can cost-effectively be ported to multiple platforms. There is a larger workforce of skilled Web app developers, and Web-based apps are easier to modify. With development cycles tightening and companies releasing apps on a frequent, iterative schedule, all indications are pointing to open standards as the new norm.

Zend Developer Pulse™ | © 2013 Zend Technologies6

THE DEVOPS DILEMMA – DISCONNECTS, WASTED TIME & MISSED RELEASES

In order to succeed in today’s mobile development environment, teams must incorporate agility into their development processes. The relationship between development and operations teams (DevOps) must also be agile. Apps are released rapidly and iterated frequently, so smooth DevOps collaboration is a must.

Our survey explored the reasons behind delays in application releases. We found that 87% of developers said they have experienced delays in moving their app from development to production. This is consistent with (although higher than) the findings of a 2012 survey of 730 applications and operations professionals by Electric Cloud, in which 50% of respondents acknowledged having missed release dates.

Without agility in the DevOps process, developers end up wasting their time debugging and trying to clarify post-production issues. Ops teams grapple with application problems that may or may not have originated with developers. A lack of shared visibility and accountability is fertile ground for such problems.

The proliferation of different mobile device types and the modern mobile user experience has driven the need to support more frequent and iterative release cycles. IT organizations are tasked with delivering high-quality, revenue-generating applications in rapid, iterative application releases on multiple platforms and devices. The application lifecycle is characterized by a complexity, scale and velocity never seen before. “Some teams deploy new software into production every day,” according to Don Wells at Extreme Programming, a pioneer of the iterative development cycles that are common today. “At the very least, you will want to get new software into production every week or two.”

This rapid development process places new demands on operations to support continuous delivery, in which small changes are released often and apps must be tested on an ongoing basis. A major disconnect between development and operations has formed as a result, giving rise to a crisis of application delays and failures.

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79%Web apps (HTML5 and other

web technologies)

Hybrid (Combination of Web and Native apps)

Native apps (Objective C, Java)

I don't know yet, but I intend to deliver content to mobile audiences

33%

26%

12%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

How do you plan to deliver content and services to your mobile audience in 2013?  (select all that apply)

Base: 4,359 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

7

We asked developers for the main reasons that they encounter delays in getting code from development to production, and received a range of responses. The most frequently cited were inconsistent environments across development, test and production, lack of automation in the application deployment process, and lack of collaboration between development and operations.

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Graph 8

Do you experience any delays in rolling out your code to production?

Base: 4,809 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

87%

13%Don't experience any delays

Do experience delays

Based on your experience, what is the main cause of failure/delay in rolling out your code to production?

Base: 4,159 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

8%

41%

27%

15%

No automation in the deployment process

Lack of collaboration with operations

Other

9%Lack of access to the production

environment

Inconsistent environments between development/testing/production

Many of these are issues could be addressed by a focus on automating the application deployment process, and creating common environments and shared visibility between development and operations.

However, there is still a gap in the adoption of these kind of solutions. Last year’s study validated that only 42% of large companies, and 38% of smaller organizations, have any kind of automation in their application deployment process. In a world of tight deadlines and iterative application releases, it is not surprising that development teams are encountering the type of delays outlined above.

Zend Developer Pulse™ | © 2013 Zend Technologies8

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In a recent survey of 730 development and operations professionals, 50% admitted missing application release dates.

56% of companies have experienced apps that work in testing but fail in production.

70% of companies said their app deployments take more than one day.

72% of operations professionals said that development is not supportive of their goals.

75% of developers said ops is a roadblock or only somewhat supportive of agile development.

Source: http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/News/DevOps-Crisis-Starts-to-Spiral-Out-of-Control-729127/http://www.serena.com/solutions/itsm/itsm-trends-infographic.html

WASTED TIME, WEEKEND WORK IS THE NORM FOR DEVELOPERS

A key finding from this year’s survey is that while developing is a creative discipline, many programmers are finding themselves spending too much of their time finding and solving problems.

The survey asked developers how much of their time is spent on production problem resolution and maintenance versus on developing new functionalities. We found that almost 80% of developers spend 25% or more of their time on problem resolution, while a not-insignificant 15% of developers consider themselves to be spending 75% or more of their time resolving issues. This is valuable time that developers could be using to build new functionalities. Instead, they are solving production problems.

Percent of companies automating the application deployment process

Base: 2,406 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2012

Small to Mid sized Companies (less than 1,000 employees) Large Companies (over 1,000 employees)

38%42%

40%

20%

0%

60%

10% problem resolution, 90% new functionalities

25% problem resolution, 75% new functionalities

75% problem resolution, 25% new functionalities

50% problem resolution, 50% new functionalities

90% problem resolution, 10% new functionalities

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

21%

37%

26%

13%

4%

How much of your time is spent on production problem resolution and maintenance vs. developing new functionalities?

Base: 4,809 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

Graph 11

9

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Notably, studies have shown that up to 70% of the time taken to resolve problems is actually spent on attempts to replicate the issue, in order to diagnose where the problem occurred. Because developers don’t have visibility into production errors, they must recreate the development environment they used to initially program the app, a significant waste of time. In a worst-case scenario, a developer could lose weeks trying to replicate significant issues, which could explain some of the more dramatic numbers in this set of survey responses.

There’s another consequence that comes from spending large amounts of time troubleshooting applications that have already gone into production. It eats into developers’ personal time. Our survey found that on average 90% of developers have worked weekends, vacations and holidays because of production emergencies. Developers in larger companies aren’t immune—87% of programmers in companies with more than 5,000 employees have also worked nights and weekends, with nearly 1/5 of large company developers saying this is a frequent occurrence.

Have you ever had to work late/work on a weekend/vacation/holiday because of an emergency problem with your application once it was in production?

Base: 4,809 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

I'm an independent developer

101-1,000 employees

1,001-5000 employees

Greater than 5,000 employees

80%

90%

100%

60%

70%

40%

50%

20%

30%

10%

0%

No

Yes

2-100 employees

89%

11%

90%

10%

91%

9%

91%

9%

87%

13%

DEPLOYMENT TO THE CLOuD

A growing number of enterprises are deploying their applications in a cloud-based environment. Not only does the cloud enable increased collaboration and productivity, but it lets companies plan for the kind of scale demanded by mobile applications with potentially huge communities of users. Analysts like Gartner project that the public cloud services market will grow by 18.5% in 2013, to a total value of $131 billion.

When we asked developers where they expect to deploy their apps once developed, a large and growing number of developers indicated that they intend to deploy to the cloud.

Our first survey, which took place in late 2011, found that 61% of developers intended to use public cloud services. In 2013, that number has shown only moderate growth to 68%.

However, we have seen a significant change in the preferred cloud vendors among developers. Amazon Web Services has grown from being the choice of 30% of developers last year to 51% in 2013. Meanwhile, Google Compute is now making a strong second showing, with 21% of developers preferring that cloud. Rackspace has held steady compared to 2012. Perhaps most notable is the lower share of both Microsoft Azure and RedHat OpenShift.

Zend Developer Pulse™ | © 2013 Zend Technologies10

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Percent of developers working on public cloud(s)

Base: 3,335 (in 2012) and 4,809 (in 2013) enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2011 and 2013

2012 2013

61%68%80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

100%

33%

51%Amazon Web Services

I don't know yet, but I do intend to use a public cloud

Google Compute

Rackspace

Microsoft Azure

Red Hat OpenShift

Other

IBM Smart Cloud

14%

21%

8%

11%

6%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

11%

Which public cloud(s) do you intend to use for your apps in 2013? (Select all that apply)

Base: 3,260 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

11

CONCLuSION

THE DEMOGRAPHICS: WHO ANSWERED OuR SuRVEY

We are now beyond the mobile adoption stage and into the mobile-first era for application development. PHP continues to play a crucial role in the process of mobile development, with more than 90% of the app developers we interviewed planning to deliver content and services to a mobile audience. Open standards and HTML5 are becoming the typical way to develop mobile apps, which will then, more often than not, be deployed to the public cloud.

Now that PHP developers have confirmed their preferences for developing mobile apps, it is time to adopt the kinds of tools that will help teams surmount this year’s biggest challenge, which comes from collaboration problems between development and operations teams. By creating consistent, automated environments across development, testing and production, the DevOps crisis that is the cause of so many deployment delays will be effectively addressed.

On the Horizon Zend is a developer-centric company that serves a vibrant community of more than five million developers around the world. We are proud to work with such ecosystem partners as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, MongoDB, Oracle, Rackspace, Red Hat, RightScale and others to support independent developers and SMB and Enterprise IT teams. Taking the pulse and responding to developers is vital to the success of our ecosystem. We invite your feedback. Please contact us at marketing@zend.com.

The developers who responded to this survey came from a range of countries and company sizes, with a bias towards corporate developers, who made up 76% of the sample.

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What size company do you work for?

Base: 4,809 enterprise, SMB and independent developers worldwideSource: Zend Technologies, Zend Developer Pulse Survey 2013

16%

50%

24%

5%

Independent developers

5000+ employees

101-1000 employees

5%1001-5000 employees

2-100 employees

Zend Developer Pulse™ | © 2013 Zend Technologies12

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

Developers and Sci-Fi: The Best Shows and MoviesTo truly take the pulse of developers, you have to consider the things the PHP development community cares about passionately, beyond just coding. During our previous survey, we asked about developers’ beer choices. We found that 68% of developers rate themselves as some type of beer lover, with nearly one third (29 percent) of developers saying that they “live for it.” One in ten developers said they are home brewers.

During this year’s survey, we decided to see what kind of TV show or movie our developers would most like to watch while consuming that beer. Knowing that many developers are science fiction fans, we decided to ask developers what their favorite sci-fi shows and movies are. This generated some surprising responses.

Top Developer Choices for Sci-Fi

1 Star Wars

2 Avatar

3 Star Trek

4 The X-Files

5 The Avengers

We’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but we were surprised to find Avatar in second place. We suppose it proves that everyone needs a true vacation from reality (and this planet) once in a while.

Corporate Headquarters: Zend Technologies, Inc. 19200 Stevens Creek Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014, uSA · Tel 1-408-253-8800 · Fax 1-408-253-8801Central Europe: (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) Zend Technologies GmbH, St.-Martin-Str. 53, 81669 Munich, Germany · Tel +49-89-516199-0 · Fax +49-89-516199-20International: Zend Technologies Ltd. 12 Abba Hillel Street, Ramat Gan, Israel 52506 · Tel 972-3-753-9500 · Fax 972-3-613-9671 France: Zend Technologies SARL, 5 Rue de Rome, ZAC de Nanteuil, 93110 Rosny-sous-Bois, France · Tel +33-1-4855-0200 · Fax +33-1-4812-3132 Italy: Zend Technologies, Largo Richini 6, 20122 Milano, Italy · Tel +39-02-5821-5832 · Fax +39-02-5821-5400Ireland: Zend Technologies, The Digital Court, Rainsford Street, Dublin 8, Ireland · Tel +353-1-6908019

© 2013 Zend Technologies Ltd. Zend is a registered trademark and phpcloud.com, Zend Developer Cloud,Zend Server, Zend Studio and Zend Developer Pulse are trademarks of Zend Technologies Ltd.

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