PalmSource, the operting sytem (OS) subsidiary of Palm, Inc. announced that it is partnering with and Insignia Solutions to create a standard Java interface to run on the Palm OS platform. The company said Insignia's Mobile Foundation for Palm OS will provide more powerful Java capabilities for developers and customers in the consumer, wireless and enterprise markets.

According to the company, it is also working with ACCESS Systems America to bring a new, secure proxyless browser to Palm OS 5, and with SafeNet to make an evaluation version of SoftRemotePDA Virtual Private Network (VPN) client for Palm OS available to licensees.

PalmSource said Insignia's Mobile Foundation for Palm OS is based on Insignia's Java Virtual Machine (JVM) software engine, which includes an optimized implementation of Sun's Java2 Micro Edition standard, and is integrated with the PDA Profile (JSR-75) set of Java APIs, promoted by PalmSource.

ACCESS Systems America is slated to provide core technology from its NetFront browser for use in the new proxyless Palm OS 5 web browser and will work with PalmSource on future versions. PalmSource said the Palm OS 5 web browser is optimized for resource-constrained mobile products and provides secure transactions via SSL (Secure Socket Layer). It supports Internet standards, including the latest W3C specifications, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, dynamic HTML, and ECMA Script (JavaScript).

The company said the evaluation version of SafeNet's SoftRemotePDA enables a licensee to develop and test VPN functionality and interoperability for their Palm Powered products by securely tunneling back to a SafeNet secure server. The licensee can test all of the features of SoftRemotePDA as well as the user experience.