Three software development tool companies have announced changes in leadership, with Zend Technologies, Catalyst Systems and Mindreef all appointing new CEOs.

On Jan. 16, Cupertino, Calif.-based Zend, which makes PHP development tools for developers, announced that the company had hired Harold Goldberg, a former executive at BMC Software, as its new CEO. Goldberg held the position of senior vice president of worldwide marketing at BMC. Goldberg succeeds Doron Gerstel as CEO of Zend, although Gerstel left Zend several months ago.

"I am truly fortunate to be joining the strong team already in place at Zend," Goldberg said in a statement. "The company is on a sharp growth trajectory being fueled by both the acceptance of open source, and the trend toward new, service-oriented programming models. I am eager to start work to capture the market opportunity and be part of a fundamental shift happening in the software industry."

Goldberg said he started with Zend on Jan. 2 and is excited to be a part of the open-source wave. "I hope to make sure Zend becomes a household name," he said.

At BMC Software, Goldberg was elected as a corporate officer by the board of directors and played a key role in defining the company's "Business Service Management" strategy, including the acquisitions of Remedy, Magic Solutions, Viadyne and Marimba, he said. Prior to BMC, Goldberg spent 18 years in senior strategy, sales and marketing roles at Remedy, Siemens Information and Communication Networks and Peregrine Systems.

"The CEO search committee established extremely demanding criteria for candidates that included experience in growing a global business, a strong track record in business software and an appetite for disruptive markets and technologies," said Cameron Lester, founding general partner with Azure Capital Partners, an investor in the company, in a statement. "There were a number of qualified candidates, but Harold was a perfect fit, and we could tell that he would mesh culturally with the company."

Resource Library:

Goldberg said he is now in "listen mode," although he is honing a three-year plan that will take advantage of the trend of enterprises both moving more and more applications to the Web and also building more Web applications with PHP.

"PHP is a grassroots language; it's the Visual Basic for the Web," Goldberg said.

Meanwhile, Goldberg said one of the key reasons he was brought into the head role at Zend was his sales and marketing background. "We need to gain market traction. We have to scale the organization and become more global in nature," he said.

In addition, Goldberg said he is working on Zend's distribution challenge, where the company must cater to both individual developers as well as international "Fortune 50" corporations as customers.

"We have to scale the distribution channel," he said. "We're looking at a three-pronged approach" with direct sales, an online store, and partnerships with OEMs and VARs," Goldberg said.

Moreover, Zend will be enhancing its services and education and training efforts, Goldberg said.

Click here to read more about Zend's moves to boost PHP usage.

Meanwhile, Chicago-based Catalyst Systems announced the appointment of Stephen King as CEO of the software development build systems maker.

Tracy Ragan, founder and former CEO of the company, will now assume the role of chief operating officer.

Like Goldberg at Zend, a large part of King's appeal to Catalyst is his background in sales and marketing, company officials said.

"We were looking to grow the company as a sales organization," Ragan said. "We always struggled with that, primarily because of my background as a programmer-turned-CEO."

With more than 35,000 seats worldwide, Catalyst Systems' Openmake software automates, tracks and reports changes and dependencies in build and release management for development teams.

"We plan to build out our sales organization and we want to get our product in the hands of as many developers as possible," King said. "We will work from our direct sales and OEM relationships and also to partner more with the open-source community and Eclipse."

"Catalyst Systems has dramatically improved visibility into the relative 'Black Art' of building and releasing software; and my vision for Catalyst is to help customers better understand the systems and social processes that move their code from build through release management," King said in a statement.

King was previously the CEO of Marqui, a Web 2.0 marketing software and service provider. Prior to Marqui, King served as executive vice president and general manager at Merant, where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing, engineering and business development. King played a role in the sale of Merant to Serena Software for $380 million.

In a separate move, Mindreef, a Hollis, N.H., maker of Web services testing and SOA (service-oriented architecture)-quality software solutions, announced the appointment of Lars Borgwing as CEO. Borgwing assumes the role as CEO after previously serving as the company's executive chairman.

Borgwing has served as founder, CEO and board member of several companies including XOsoft, Net Insight, Corechange, and various U.S. businesses operated by contracting conglomerate Skanska.

In a statement, Borgwing said Mindreef "is well positioned in the market at a time when global enterprises are becoming more heavily invested in SOA. The growing need for Web services testing and SOA quality solutions fueled a surge in orders for Mindreef SOAPscope products, marking record growth for the company in 2006. I look forward to working with the team to capitalize on this growth and expand the business moving forward."

Check out eWEEK.com's for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.