Theale, UK (26 June, 2012) — ABBYY®, a leading provider of document recognition, data capture, linguistic technologies and professional services, today announced the release of ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK, an online service that provides a Web API for integrating ABBYY recognition technologies. Designed to increase revenue opportunities for software developers, ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK enables them to easily leverage award-winning optical character recognition (OCR), intelligent character recognition (ICR), barcode recognition, and PDF conversion technologies to create their own applications. In addition, ABBYY’s flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model allows developers to tie expenses to their actual monthly revenue.

One of the first ISVs who started integrating the new ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK into their document management system (DMS) was DocsCorp, a leading DMS developer based in Australia. “We have been working with ABBYY for many years and they have proven themselves as a reliable partner. Their new Cloud initiative was exactly what we were looking for - with Cloud OCR we’ll be able to reach new market opportunities.  Some smaller organisations would prefer a 'pay as you go' option, and with ABBYY’s Cloud service we can sell our own software products on a 'subscription' basis,” says DocsCorp President and CEO, Dean Sappey.

ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK hosts all processing operations in the cloud and is available via a Web API that supports nearly any operating system, including mobile. Developers are also provided with technology updates automatically, giving them the latest OCR technology as soon as it is available. Key features include:

Exceptional Language Support and Professional Recognition Capabilities
 
The new SDK recognises 198 languages in printed text, including all major European languages, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; and 113 hand-printed languages and checkmarks. In addition, ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK features professional recognition tools such as business card recognition and barcode recognition APIs.

Virtually Unlimited Scalability

With ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK, developers can integrate a service with their applications that will quickly and securely scale up and down to meet the demands of their end users. “We’ve already tested ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK’s scalability feature to find that it is fast and stable,” added Sappey. “We look forward to finishing up with the development and testing stage, and to offering our customers our document management solution with a Cloud OCR option."

No Hardware or IT Costs

ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK service leverages Microsoft® Windows® Azure™ to host OCR processing functionality. This enables developers to get up-and-running without significant up-front infrastructure or maintenance costs. Another advantage ABBYY’s cloud approach brings to organisations is the ability to outsource computing power for OCR, which is a one-time resource-intensive process, and scale it on demand to handle large volumes of documents. This provides the unparalleled ability to OCR vast quantities of documents in a short amount of time.

Platform-Independent

ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK enables flexible development through the availability of programming code samples for .NET, PHP, Ruby, cURL, Python, Java, and ASP.NET, as well as support for the Apple® iOS, Google® Android™ and Windows® Phone mobile OS, at no additional charge.

Flexible Pricing

ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK is based on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing developers to scale the relationship as their revenues rise, without requiring significant upfront cost.

“We have been working with beta developers for several months now and are very encouraged by the feedback we have received,” said Andrey Isaev, director of technology products department at ABBYY. “Our new Cloud OCR SDK makes it simple for developers to get their applications up-and-running quickly, and better differentiate their products by offering a cloud option.”