ABBYY is seeking to broaden the use of cloud-based data capture  with the launch of a software development kit (SDK ) that provides on-demand access to its  character recognition and PDF conversion  technologies.
The company already provides its own cloud platform for casual OCR, FineReader Online, which boasts over 30 million users worldwide using the service to process around 30,000 pages per month. The release of the SDK is aimed to stimulate developers to create new applications that utilise ABBYY’s OCR engine.

The cloud-based SDK is more accessible for developers than obtaining a full document recognition SDK engine. 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.

Australia’s DocsCorp is one of the first to integrate the new Cloud OCR SDK into its document management system (DMS).

“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 organizations 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,” said DocsCorp President and CEO, Dean Sappey.

The 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.

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

With the 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 finish up with the development and testing stage, and to begin offering our customers our document management solution with a Cloud OCR option.”

The ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK service leverages Microsoft Windows Azure to host OCR processing functionality.

ABBYY initially deployed on Amazon S3  but this was not successful as the OCR solution has been  built on SQL Server which is not native supported by Amazon. As a result it was launched in a virtual machine which results in poor database performance, whereas Azure offers SQLAzure.

“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.”

For information on ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK, visit http://ocrsdk.com/. For more information about ABBYY, visit http://www.abbyy.com