Implementing Memcached to improve your application's performance can be done fairly quickly without using Zend Framework. If you're just wanting Memcached, you don't necessarily need Zend Framework. On the other hand, if you're using Zend Framework but you're not using Memcached, this will help you get things going. But whatever your situation: If you're not already using Memcached, start tomorrow. <?php // configure caching backend / frontend strategy $oBackend = new Zend_Cache_Backend_Memcached( array( 'servers' => array( array( 'host' => 'localhost', //'127.0.0.1', 'port' => '11211' ) ), 'compression' => true ) ); $oFrontend = new Zend_Cache_Core( array( 'caching' => true, 'cache_id_prefix' => 'myApp', 'logging' => true, 'logger' => $oCacheLog, 'write_control' => true, 'automatic_serialization' => true, 'ignore_user_abort' => true, 'lifetime' => 60, // cache lifetime of 1 minute ) ); // build a caching object $oCache = Zend_Cache::factory( $oFrontend, $oBackend ); // add in Registry to use anyware Zend_Registry::set('cacheCore', $oCache); // do caching // frontendController.php (example) $oCache = Zend_Registry::get('cacheCore'); $sCacheId = 'LargeDataSet'; if ( ! $oCache->test( $sCacheId ) ) { //cache miss, so we have to get the data the hard way $aDataSet = new stdClass; $aDataSet->a = 'test'; $aDataSet->b = 123; $oCache->save( $aDataSet, $sCacheId ); // saved cached echo "Save cache:"; print_r($aDataSet); // display: Save cache: stdClass Object ( [a] => test [b] => 123 ) } else { //cache hit, load from memcache $aDataSet = $oCache->load( $sCacheId ); // data from cache echo "From cache: "; print_r($aDataSet); // display: From cache: stdClass Object ( [a] => test [b] => 123 ) }