Nuance Introduces OmniPage 17; Delivers Paperless and Mobile Innovations that Unlock the Green Office
New Version of Leading Document Conversion and OCR Application Boosts Accuracy by 40 Percent, Delivers Enhanced Integration with Microsoft Office, Innovative Smartphone Features and Helps Drive down Document Management Costs
London, UK, May 13, 2009 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today introduced OmniPage® Professional 17, the newest version of the world’s best-selling and most accurate document conversion and scanning application for Microsoft Windows. Nuance has designed OmniPage 17 to help unlock the potential of the green office, delivering innovations that enable an easy and practical transition from paper to paperless – at home, in the office and on-the-go.
“With OmniPage 17, Nuance has focused first on the most important element of document conversion solutions – accuracy – delivering a stunning 40 percent increase in accuracy for turning paper into editable digital documents,” said Robert Weideman, general manager and senior vice president of the Nuance Document Imaging Division. “We also implemented a range of ease-of-use and mobile capabilities that greatly expand the audience that will benefit from using OmniPage. The new version gives a dual meaning to the phrase ‘going green’, first in helping people reduce their reliance on physical paper, and second through the money and time everyone can save by using OmniPage; in some cases, office workers can save up to £3,700 per year.” Of the 513 organisations recently surveyed in the UK by the organisers of Storage Expo, 70 percent said green IT and efficiency were still priorities, but with the provision that it must be saving them money.
OmniPage 17 tackles complexity first by putting scanning and document conversion directly into Microsoft Office, integrating a “Direct OCR” button with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This makes it easier than ever to turn paper and PDF into fully formatted documents, complete with text, columns, tables and graphics, from within today’s popular desktop applications.
OmniPage 17 cuts the cord from the scanner, letting users capture paper documents, articles and even signs using the built-in cameras on mobile phones, such as the Apple iPhone and other devices. (Mobile phones currently number 3.84 billion worldwide). (1) The enhanced OmniPage 3D-Correction technology automatically corrects for distortions caused by images that are misaligned, then OmniPage accurately turns the images into editable text and searchable PDF documents.
The new version of OmniPage now recognises Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, thus enabling users to select from more than 120 languages of the world for their OCR needs. OmniPage meets the need of today`s office workers who have to work with multi-language documents.
In addition, this new version can now recognise vertical text, such as rotated captions, making them editable inside or outside OmniPage and leading to more layout accuracy.
OmniPage 17 also tackles the most significant historical barrier to the green office – the lack of a practical alternative to the portability and convenience of paper. By leveraging recent advances in eBook technologies OmniPage 17 includes features that maximise the value of ‘electronic paper’ to not only save trees but also to deliver advantages over physical paper. The new release includes support for various eBooks and the recently US-launched Kindle 2,0, and allows them to re-format documents automatically for easy reading and navigating. This is an important feature in light of recent analyst predictions that, in the future, 75 percent of all book sales will be sold in an eBook format. (2) OmniPage also creates the document text needed for using search and the synthesized text-to-speech (TTS) “read-aloud” feature from Nuance that is built into many ebook devices.
The accuracy and convenience delivered by OmniPage 17 also expands the benefits of the productive green office to nearly everyone who works with documents. Analyst research has shown that individual office workers spend 3-4 hours each week – representing salary costs of £2,900 to £3,700 per year – simply recreating and reformatting documents. (3) This is valuable time that can be saved by using OmniPage to automate those manual tasks. Using averages for typing speed and accuracy, OmniPage can save 15 minutes per page compared to manual typing, or more than an hour for a simple five-page document. (4) OmniPage also enables scan-to-Microsoft SharePoint, enabling the centralised archiving of paper as searchable PDF and Microsoft XPS formats in the popular content management system.
The dramatic productivity gains delivered by OmniPage are a major reason for its popularity, especially when organisations are seeking tools that help overcome increasing workloads and shrinking staff.
For a complete features list of OmniPage 17, please visit www.nuance.com/omnipage.
Pricing and Availability
OmniPage Professional 17 will be available in the UK and Ireland through Nuance’s network of reseller partners and in the Nuance Online Shop by May 28. OmniPage Professional 17 is £249 plus VAT for individual users, with volume discounts available through the Nuance Volume License Program. Upgrade pricing and support products are also available. There will be also an entry-level version of OmniPage 17 available at £79.99 including VAT. For additional information on features, pricing and volume licensing programs, please visit www.nuance.co.uk/omnipage.
About Nuance Communications
Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
Data Sources
- According to the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute
- Analysts predict that eventually 75% of all book sales will be sold in an eBook format. (Gartner: Emerging Trend: The E-Book's Day Is Finally Ready to Dawn, 12/19/08)
- Past analyst research has shown that individual office workers spend 3-4 hours each week – representing salary costs of $4,500 – $5700 per year simply recreating and reformatting documents. (IDC, Proving the Value of Content Technologies Study, 2004)
- The automated conversion provided by OmniPage could save the average typist 15 minutes or more per page compared to manual conversion and layout, or more than an hour for a simple five-page document (Nuance)
Additional Data for Consideration
- Recent studies have shown that most people type at just 35 words per minute (WPM) and with just 52% accuracy. (Nuance)
- Scan-enabled devices to capture and convert paper are growing at a rate of 22.2% each year in the U.S. (U.S. MFP 2006-2010 Forecast and Analysis (IDC #201304); U.S. High-Speed Document Imaging Scanner 2006-2010 Forecast (IDC #203552))
- More than 38M scan-capable devices will ship in the US alone in 2009 (Forecast: Printers, Copiers and MFPs, Worldwide, 2006-2012; Gartner)
- America's white-collar workers have been generating less paper since 2001, and that trend is likely to continue. (InfoTrends)
Quotes about OmniPage 17
Customers
Moving items directly from OmniPage to SharePoint is great. The One-Click Direct OCR buttons for MS Office was a surprise. They have worked perfectly and I use this feature a lot. This one feature is a real time saver for me. I have always thought that OmniPage had the best OCR accuracy of anyone but OmniPage 17 is really accurate. The accuracy of the document layout is far superior to OmniPage 15. I am able to move data from Word to PDF and PDF to Word while keeping the layout of the document. It’s just terrific. I am really pleased with the OmniPage 17 and glad I took the opportunity to upgrade.”
- Thomas Hackett
“I am writing to provide my thoughts on OmniPage 17. I have used versions 12, 15, and currently use 16. The first thing I noticed was the improved load speed. This is important to me because I use OmniPage on a notebook computer that doesn’t possess a blazing fast CPU. The interface seems much cleaner, less cluttered. I use Word 2007 daily and the Word 2007 integration is simpler than OmniPage 16. I fell in love with digital camera OCR with version 16 and continued to be impressed with OmniPage 17. I oversee 19 regional satellite offices and move to a different one each week. Some of the offices don’t have an easily accessible scanner. In that case, I pull out my digital camera and snap photos of several documents, transfer the JPEG images to the computer, and convert them with OmniPage. The results are consistently accurate.”
– Joel A. Harper
“Our experience with OmniPage 17 has been very positive. It works very well with our new scanner and our results have been excellent. The scanning is fast and extremely accurate. The program flawlessly scans multiple page documents with ease. We like being able to output directly to Office 2007. The work we do with OmniPage 17 is so seamless we hardly realize we are scanning hard copy.”
– Jess Keller, Creative Director. Five Thousand Forms, Inc.
Nuance Executive
“For OmniPage 17, ‘going green’ not only stands for the resources that will be saved through cutting back on paper, but it represents the financial value delivered by the time saved simply using the product. OmniPage 17 will open the door to the green office to millions simply by showing that there is an automatic, accurate and easy way to turn paper into electronic documents that you can edit, use and share on your computer and mobile device.”
– Robert Weideman, general manager and senior vice president, Nuance Document Imaging Division.
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