Perforce Software, a provider of solutions to enterprise teams requiring productivity, visibility, and scale along the development lifecycle, announced the results of their annual survey of the PHP ecosystem, the Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report.

The report presents industry data and analysis on the key factors shaping PHP development and management, as well as forward-looking analysis on team priorities initiatives, and overall confidence in the PHP ecosystem. Key findings from the report centered on PHP version adoption and migration plans – with nearly 55% of those surveyed using at least one end of life PHP version in production.

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“There’s a recurring trend in PHP – enterprises, regardless of firmographic profile, are struggling to keep up with rapid PHP release and support lifecycles,” said Zend Senior Product Manager Matthew Weier O’Phinney. “With many PHP teams understaffed, and nearly all teams being asked to prioritize development of new features over migrations, it’s no wonder that so many teams are falling behind.”

This usage of EOL PHP comes despite 72% of respondents noting they had performed at least one PHP version migration within the last 12 months. Among those who noted a recent migration, over half migrated off PHP 7.4 – with most respondents noting code refactoring as their top migration pain point. The survey also found that organizations who adopted container and container orchestration technologies were much more likely to have completed a recent migration.

“Our survey data showed clear stratification among PHP teams this year – teams that have containerized and orchestrated applications are better able to facilitate migrations and are consequently more likely to use supported versions of PHP,” continued Matthew Weier O’Phinney. “DevOps maturity isn’t a magic bullet for PHP teams, however. Teams working with PHP-based content management systems or platforms like WordPress and Drupal continue to struggle with unsupported CMS-specific extensions, and no level of organizational DevOps maturity can solve ecosystem-based issues.”

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Another complicating factor uncovered by the survey was a disconnect between perceived application security by varying job functions within organizations, with hands-on development roles more likely to understand the security implications of deploying end of life software than their C-Suite peers.

“Deploying unsupported open source software – including languages like PHP, or operating systems like CentOS – will continue to be a sore spot for many enterprises, and one that can take leaders by surprise if they’re not paying attention.” said Perforce General Manager Dan Dodot. “We’re seeing that, across industries and verticals, development teams are being asked to develop revenue-driving features, often at the cost of maintaining application security. The good news is that teams, with the help of our Perforce LTS, support, and professional services offerings, can have the best of both worlds.”

The survey again raised money for Code2040, a non-profit that works to dismantle the structural barriers that prevent the full participation and leadership of Black and Latinx people in the innovation economy.

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