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ABBYY announces first comprehensive SDK designed specifically for data capture integration

Johannesburg, 04 May 2009

Deltalink Consulting, the exclusive southern African distributor of Russia-based ABBYY, today announced the latter's FlexiCapture Engine 8.0, a new software development kit (SDK) for integrating data and document capture technologies in Windows-based applications.

ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 is the first comprehensive data capture SDK to combine technologies and tools for processing forms, semi-structured and unstructured documents, data verification, document classification, and export for backend processing and archiving in a single developer environment. The new ABBYY SDK enables developers, ISVs and service providers to empower their own products and services with industry-leading technologies already proven in thousands of real-world projects.

“With the release of data capture SDK, we are happy to provide developers with powerful and flexible instrument to smoothly integrate ABBYY's technologies that have an impressive history of success in numerous markets,” commented Andrey Isaev, director of the technology products department at ABBYY. “The need for data capture is continually growing and expanding into a wide number of new segments and opportunities across many vertical sectors. FlexiCapture Engine is designed to address this growing audience by giving developers the tools to easily customise their solutions according to their vertical market needs.”

With its ability to extract data from forms and documents of any type and complexity, the SDK is an ideal instrument for developing vertical solutions, such as those intended for processing invoices, medical forms, insurance applications, examination tests and ID cards. It can be also used for creating customised data capture applications for various scanning devices and terminals.

FlexiCapture Engine delivers intelligent document separation and classification capabilities, which eliminate the need for manual pre-sorting and separation, and enable the processing of all document types in a single stream. As a result, the SDK can be successfully used for high-load projects or integrated into enterprise management and workflow systems. The new product also offers the widest language support and, therefore, can be integrated into international document management systems.

FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 delivers a full range of document processing technologies and features, including:

* A comprehensive set of document recognition and capture technologies.
The product provides a powerful set of ABBYY's core recognition technologies, including Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) for hand-printed text, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for printed text, bar code recognition, Optical Mark Recognition (OMR), and PDF conversion. It also includes innovative FlexiCapture technology to process semi-structured and unstructured documents, including invoices, price lists, waybills, contracts and other documents where the location of data fields is not fixed.

* Automated processing of multi-page forms and documents in one stream
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 delivers easy-to-use tools for creating templates of fixed forms, such as questionnaires, surveys, application forms and tests. It additionally provides flexible descriptions called FlexiLayouts for analysis and processing of semi-structured and unstructured documents. Using logic and a sequence of hypotheses, FlexiLayouts allow the program to accurately locate fields to capture relevant data despite their varied locations on different documents. The same technology also simplifies the processing of long tables that span across multiple pages. FlexiLayouts also enable automatic document separation and classification. They automatically identify document types in a processing stream, including multi-page documents with varied number of pages. As a result, all types of forms and documents (including appendices and attachments) can be automatically processed in a single batch without the need for manual pre-sorting or use of blank separation pages, patch codes, or bar codes.

* Document indexing and PDF conversion
With its powerful OCR and PDF conversion technologies, ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 supports the ability to automatically index documents with relevant data for improved searchability and convert them to PDF and PDF/A formats for long-term archiving.

* Data validation and verification options
FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 offers powerful data validation and verification instruments and methods such as checking captured values against databases, checking data formats, data validation via scripts and special API for effective manual verification.

* The widest language support
The SDK features a unique base of recognition languages, including more than 180 languages for OCR and over 110 languages for ICR. It also supports 17 types of 1D bar codes as well as PDF 417 and widespread 2D bar codes. ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine delivers a high degree of accuracy for both multilingual documents and single-language documents.

For further information, please contact Gerrie Terblanche, tel: +27 11 888 7622; fax +27 11 888 7372; e-mail gerriet@deltalink.co.za.

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Deltalink Consulting

Deltalink Consulting, established in 1993, is an independent company that provides fixed content management solutions within the African market. Its solutions incorporate products from international suppliers that satisfy the need for document capture, document conversion and the sharing, managing, processing and archiving of 'unstructured documents'.

Deltalink Consulting is the exclusive southern African distributor of Russia-based ABBYY's FineReader, FormReader, FlexiCapture, Recognition Server and FineReader and FlexiCapture SDK's; a distributor in southern Africa for Open Text document management - Alchemy and Process Centre (Workflow) solutions; and a distributor in Southern Africa for Motive System's M-Files document management software.

Editorial contacts

Paul Booth
Global Research Partners
(+27) 82 568 1179
pabooth@cis.co.za
Gerrie Terblanche
Deltalink Consulting
(+27) 11 888 7622
gerriet@deltalink.co.za