At our company, we mainly use it for development projects where we need to create a customized web application. In most cases, we use a Linux web hosting server and Zend PHP is then the engine that runs on top of our chosen Linux-based OS. In addition, we regularly make use of different PHP frameworks including Laravel and others.
With the PHP engine, a major benefit is that we can cut down on so many additional expenses, from the development stage to the deployment stage.
For development, there are many open-source extensions and libraries available to us, so as a web app development company we're not bogged down by proprietary technologies when designing custom applications. And for deployment, we have broader options available than when using any Java-based or .Net-based server or architecture.
There's also the fact that we can easily pick up popular PHP-based platforms like WordPress and customize them to our needs, which gives us much more time to focus on the business side of development.
Essentially, we get the best performance at very affordable costing. And we can then pass those savings forward onto our clients, which makes everyone happy.