Other solutions such as Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) are popular. However, the lack of security and potential higher cost of hardware and maintenance keep them out of reach of many small companies. Rather than spend millions in licenses and administrative costs for an inferior product, we choose to run a Free Software solution.

In a recent study by the Robert Frances Group of Westport, Connecticut, it was found that the cost of running Linux was roughly 40 percent of that of Microsoft Windows and 14 percent of Sun Microsystems’ Solaris operating systems. This alone will make any company think twice about deploying a Web-based application on Microsoft Windows. In that same study, it was also found that the typical Windows administrator managed an average of only 10 machines each, whereas Linux administrators managed many times that number.

Speed is another significant factor to most of us. We need our Web-based applications to respond quickly and remain snappy throughout the user’s experience. With proper coding techniques, PHP is many times faster than Microsoft’s ASP or Sun Microsystems’ Java platform.

Another great feature of PHP is the ability to create command-line scripting that can perform tasks to your system at scheduled intervals by using CRON jobs within Linux. You can have PHP clean up your MySQL database weekly, or have it create backups of your website every few days, and so on. Although many PHP versus ASP debates could be spawned from these statements, the truth stands that ASP probably will never be as robust as PHP.

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