Lucent Technologies today announced that the next generation of Lucent's Inferno Network Operating System will support PersonalJava applications on screen phones, set-top boxes and other consumer communications products.

Inferno is a distributed operating system, developed at Bell Labs, that runs on all kinds of computers on all kinds of networks. Because the operating system is so small -- fitting itself and an application in 1.5 megabytes of memory it is ideal for screen phones, set-top boxes and other consumer products that will be used to access information across a network.

Because Inferno deals with information and distributed computing resources across networks, Inferno is an ideal addition to network servers, where it resides on top of a host operating system and provides transparent access for users to any of the resources available on the network. Its inherent security and authentication features also lay the groundwork for a new generation of electronic commerce applications that take advantage of screen-phones and TV add-on networking products.

Inferno Release 1.1 is available now; Inferno release 2.0 will be commercially available this fall.

"Putting Sun's PersonalJava on the Inferno platform opens the door to the consumer market for a whole new group of Java application developers," said Mike Skarzynski, president and general manager of Lucent Technologies' Inferno Network Operating Software Solutions Group. "The combination of Inferno and PersonalJava has significant advantages, particularly in the area of security, for anyone addressing the consumer information services marketplace."

The addition of PersonalJava to Inferno lets PersonalJava applications take advantage of Inferno's security and authentication features, while preserving the ability common to Inferno's PersonalJava applications to run unchanged on a wide variety of consumer devices and computers. Sun's PersonalJava is designed specifically for network-connectable products people use in homes, while mobile, or in the office. These devices have displays but might not include a keyboard or a mouse.

Customers interested in obtaining an Inferno Development Kit should call 1-888-LUCENT8. Evaluation copies of the product and application demonstrations are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.lucent.com/inferno/ .

About Lucent Technologies

Lucent Technologies (LU) designs, builds, and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems, and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm of the company. For more information about Lucent Technologies, headquartered at Murray Hill, N.J., visit the website at http://www.lucent.com .