Content management firm Jadu has released a new tool which could bring together the fiercely opposing spheres of PHP and Microsoft's .NET, bridging developer skills gaps and lowering the cost of web application development.

The Phalanger PHP compiler was developed and funded by Jadu, but is being released to the open source community, the company said.

The tool works by allowing the compilation of PHP applications which can run natively under the .NET Framework, allowing firms to make use of PHP apps without needing to rip out existing .NET/Visual Studio infrastructure, according to Jadu chief executive Suraj Kika.

"If you want to use WordPress but you're a Microsoft house, you can compile WordPress down to an executable and drop it onto .NET with Phalanger," he said. "You can then start working on it in Visual Studio, and build your own apps around it. It is extremely portable."

The tool could also give developers on both sides a major career boost, as it removes the need for costly retraining in either .NET or PHP, explained Kika.

"We are expecting exponential take-up. There are going to be a lot of excited PHP developers seeing the entire Microsoft customer base opening up to them," he said.

"The spirit of open source versus proprietary created a divide; this challenges that divide, and finds a way to unite two of the most ubiquitous languages on the web."