Canadian music and video pay-for-play kiosk vendor Software Control Systems International Inc has axed Microsoft Windows as its operating system of choice and entered into a deal with Lucent Technologies Inc, licensing the new Inferno network operating system and programming environment. The Richmond, British Columbia based company said that Windows is not optimized to run the high performance multimedia applications that are planned for its XVN kiosk systems, some of which have already been installed at hospitality and entertainment centers in the US, Canada and Germany. Inferno, written by the Bell Labs team originally responsible for Unix twenty-five years ago, is suitable for networked embedded applications where system memory needs to be limited. Software Control Systems was established in 1992 employing 12 people and expects to release its first commercial product in April. Edmondson said of the company: We are structuring it to move from a development to a commercial company. In the early stages products have defined what the markets want and for some time we had been looking for a stage to build our system on, which we believe we have now found.
