2009 just ended, and since we've only just commenced work in 2010, there's still time to look back at 2009 and see what events have shaped the way we work with PHP and what happened in the general PHP ecosystem. PHPdeveloper.org has a nice overview from a community perspective. I'll cover some community aspects briefly as well, but will focus on the broader PHP ecosystem, including its adoption in the enterprise and industry participation.

Wow, what a rollercoaster ride 2008 was; in so many ways. The world faced the biggest financial crisis most of us have ever seen in our lives, the balance of power in the world shifted significantly and fuel prices both had an all time high and a 5 year low in the same year. Crazy times. And I think we haven't seen the end of it yet.

It's hard to analyse what the exact effect of all of this is on our own industry. If you look at TechCrunch's layoff tracker, it is clear that IT was not left unaffected. Several companies that are close to the PHP community have seen layoffs: SUN, current owner of MySQL, laid off about 5000 jobs; Yahoo, the biggest PHP user on the planet, laid off 1500 and even Zend was troubled by layoffs this year.

On my personal blog I have written an article about how 2007 was a year where PHP strengthened its position in the business world.

Being a PHP service company, this naturally had an impact on Ibuildings. Our team of PHP professionals grew significantly, and we even expanded our horizon into other countries, starting with the UK. We welcomed many new customers. Some that were already using PHP, some that have only just embraced PHP as a development language.