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appserver.io is open source PHP Application Server that supports multi-threading out-of-the-box. appserver.io is pushing PHP into a whole new era. You can use it with your existing applications like Drupal, Magento or WordPress and benefit from the performance and additional features of appserver.io. To learn something more we recently chatted with Josef Willkommer from appserver.io team:

Q: appserver.io is a next generation PHP infrastructure, could you tell us something more about it?

A: appserver.io is not a webserver like Apache or nginx, nor a Timer Service or Message Queue. It is all of them and much more in one extremely powerful bundle. It is a next-generation PHP infrastructure consisting of a lightning fast webserver completely written in PHP including additional frequently needed services powerful bundle. You can use all of the provided services or only specifically selected ones in your existing application with no additional tweaks. This is just what you need since we have eliminated the need for additional tools or additional services – appserver.io and PHP and you´re done!

Another pretty cool thing: appserver.io supports multi-threading in PHP out-of-the-box.

Last but not least it is completely written in PHP enabling the PHP community to adapt appserver.io to their specific needs with no additional coding language – just PHP!

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Q: What are the biggest benefits of using appserver.io?

A: One of the biggest benefits of using appserver.io for developers is for sure, its modular architecture and that it is completely built in PHP. This enables developers to extend existing or integrate new functionality much more efficient. Additional, and this is also a big benefit for vendors, beside basic webserver functionality, it comes with powerful services like a servlet-engine, persistence-container, message-queue and a timer-service that can massively speed up application development and therefore helps to save money.

We´ve decided to publish and operate the solution as real open source software because we´re convinced that this will be the best way to make appserver.io part of the PHP community. This way developers that are interested to help pushing the language up to a new level can be part of the project and vendors are more flexible and independent.

Last but not least appserver.io is also a proof of concept that stateful application development with PHP, a scripting language, is possible at all and opens countless new opportunities in the PHP ecosystem. This pushes PHP to a new level and makes it ready for real enterprise applications with unexpected performance, scalability and security.

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Q: Tell us something more about your team and the company behind appserver.io?

A: appserver.io is a product of TechDivision which is an established internet technology company from Germany that supports famous national and international customers with the planning, conception and implementation of web-based technologies already for years. As Magento Gold Partner and TYPO3 Association Gold Member, TechDivision is one of the leading addresses for ambitious Magento and TYPO3 solutions. Beside divers medium-sized companies, a lot of international acting companies, such as Ritter-Sport, American Express, Meggle or Ferrero trust the know-how and experience of TechDivision. Actually TechDivision has 2 locations in Rosenheim/Kolbermoor and Munich with 70 employees mainly with technological background.

The appserver.io core team consists of the following six people:

Stefan Willkommer, CTO

Tim Wagner, Project Founder & Lead Developer

Johann Zelger, Lead Developer & Softwarearchitect

Bernhard Wick, Softwarearchitect

Josef Willkommer, CMO

Guido Sieger, Head of Partner and License Management

Q: Is it possible to use appserver.io with existing applications (WordPress or Magento, etc.)?

A: Yes, absolutely! Appserver.io is a cool and sophiscated infrastructure fully built upon the PHP stack. This makes it truly easy to develop and extend the platform. Appserver.io comes with a built in webserver module with PHP-FPM therefore it is possible to install any PHP-App and run it on that platform. You can use appserver.io with your existing applications like Drupal, Magento or WordPress and benefit from the performance and additional opportunities of appserver.io.

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Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: We had many, interesting, discussions with experienced PHP core developers about the possibilities and pitfalls that multithreading in a language like PHP comes along with. Most of them thought, that it still will not be possible to provide an implementation of a stable server with high performance as base for an application server. Months later, we think, we can refute that.

We have a really clear and strong vision for the future of PHP!

After finishing appserver.io 1.0.0 that allows stateful, enterprise-grade application development, we think, that PHP is now ready to make the next big step into the Java dominated enterprise market. As Open Source driven service provider, focused on Magento, TYPO3 CMS and TYPO3 Neos projects, we faced various problems when we tried to scale out growing businesses. Exactly that has been the reason, why we decided to start appserver.io and will now complement it with an Enterprise Edition, providing out-of-the-box solutions for requirements of mid- and enterprise range web applications like load balancing, clustering, dashboard, event monitor, authentication and authorization Services and failover functionality.

Millions of developers and great, simple to use and easy to install applications made PHP the most used language for developing web applications these days. 80 percent market share can not be wrong! But out there, another huge market, not yet recognized by the PHP ecosystem, is still waiting to be obtained by us. You may wonder, what we are talking about? About the financial, insurance and industry market, which has, regarding a Gartner analysis from 2011, a volume of about 17 billion dollars. Completely covered by big players as IBM’s Websphere, Oracle’s WebLogic and JBoss EAP, we think it’s time to tear out a big piece of that cake for the PHP ecosystem.

To play with the big ones, we think, PHP needs a bunch of solutions, to satisfy the requirements for performance, scalability, maintainability and last but not least security, these market requests.