World’s Best Selling OCR and Document Conversion Software Delivers Unrivaled Accuracy, Ease-of-Use and Innovative Features – Using Your Scanner, MFP and Digital Camera

BURLINGTON, Mass., July 31, 2007 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today introduced OmniPage® Professional 16, the newest version of the world’s best-selling and most accurate optical character recognition (OCR) and document conversion application for Microsoft Windows. With the best document conversion accuracy, breakthrough three-dimensional (3D) digital camera capture technology and amazing speed advances, OmniPage Professional 16 is the easiest way to edit, share and store paper, PDF and electronic documents.

Its high accuracy and patented innovations have made OmniPage Professional the world’s best-selling desktop OCR application for years. The new release of OmniPage Professional strengthens the heart of OCR by delivering a 27 percent increase in document conversion accuracy and speed increases of up to 46 percent. Better still, Nuance has integrated its newest technology to take advantage of today’s pervasive dual-core processors to deliver an amazing 97 percent speed improvement when comparing OmniPage 15 on a single core system – making OmniPage 16 up to 50 percent more accurate and more than 46 percent faster than alternatives.

OmniPage Professional 16 is also the first desktop OCR application to provide native support for the new open standard Ecma Open XML file formats used by the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Further, OmniPage Professional 16 is the first OCR application to provide input and export support for the XML Paper Specification, or XPS, an important new ‘electronic paper’ format for scanning, sharing, archiving and indexing documents for search applications.

“I think we’ve all recognized that paper documents are not going away anytime soon, and they continue to create significant business and productivity challenges when compared to electronic documents,” said Ralph Gammon, editor and publisher, Document Imaging Report. “With OmniPage 16, Nuance shows that OCR and document conversion can be applied in new ways to overcome these challenges. Increased speed and accuracy, a simplified user interface, enhanced forms capabilities, XPS and Office 2007 support – all of these features cement Nuance’s status as a leader in the document capture market. OmniPage continues to offer real value and time savings benefits to organizations of all sizes.”

Because of its accuracy and ease of use, millions have selected OmniPage over alternatives to replace manual document conversion with an automated approach, saving time and overcoming the high costs associated with traditional paper processes. Organizations large and small turn to OmniPage to automate the paper-to-digital conversion and archiving of every kind of document – including letters, contracts, spreadsheets, magazine articles, research reports, technical manuals and more.

“The new release of OmniPage delivers powerful document capture and conversion capabilities that are particularly valuable to users of Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007,” said Gray Knowlton, group product manager for the Office Group at Microsoft Corp. “Supporting the Ecma Open XML file formats and XPS will help users capture and exchange information in open formats – an important step forward in enabling interoperability.”

Most compelling in OmniPage 16 are the features and capabilities that extend the applications of OCR and document conversion to a broader set of everyday document tasks. Many of the enhancements and new features in OmniPage 16 are unique innovations not available in alternative solutions. These include:

• Best OCR and Document Conversion Accuracy – OmniPage Professional 16 is 27 percent more accurate in overall document conversion than the previous release, with significant advances in providing “same as original” conversion to editable formats. Instead of relying on text boxes and other visual tricks to mimic the look of the original, OmniPage duplicates the original using the highest-level features within word processing and spreadsheet applications. This results in columns, tables, graphics and text that are eminently editable, and makes OmniPage 16 up to 50 percent more accurate than alternatives.



• The Fastest Ever – OmniPage Professional 16 avoids the traditional trade-off of accuracy at the expense of speed. The new release is both more accurate and faster, delivering up to 46 percent speed improvements for document conversion. Nuance has implemented additional improvements that enable even better performance on Intel and AMD dual-core processing chips, which have become common for personal computers from vendors such as Dell and HP.



• Innovative 3D Capture for Digital Cameras – A picture really can be worth a thousand words with OmniPage Professional 16. While others have tried to support converting documents captured using digital cameras, the accuracy and results have disappointed. Through the addition of 3DC, or 3D Capture, OmniPage automatically corrects for the distortion of the angle and rotation of the camera, as well as for the curve of the page in an open book – making OmniPage 16 a practical solution for digital camera capture and up to an astounding 74 percent more accurate than alternatives.



• Unique “Scan-and-Redact” – Handling sensitive information is a serious concern for government and corporate organizations, as well as individuals concerned with names and email addresses, social security and phone numbers and other information that can be used by identity thieves. OmniPage Professional 16 is the first desktop OCR product to address this concern, making redaction – the removal of text from an image and PDF file – a core feature. It is also the first ever to make redaction a part of the scanning process. Users can set sensitive words or phrases as an attribute prior to scanning, and OmniPage Professional 16 will redact on the fly. Users can also select highlight-for-redaction, where candidate words are highlighted for review by the individual or others prior to the final redaction step. Nuance has submitted a patent application for the redaction capabilities delivered in OmniPage.



• Easiest OCR to Use – OmniPage 16 proves once and for all that scanning and document conversion does not have to be complex. Its Quick Convert feature automates and simplifies turning paper and PDF into documents that you can edit, while its patented One-Button scanning makes it easy to associate specific tasks to buttons on your scanner – such as scan-to-Word or PDF, save as XPS and more. The new File-It Assistant feature even creates barcode coversheets that let you automatically scan documents directly into specific folders on your PC and network.
• First OCR with Integrated Document Management – Scanning and OCR simply aren’t enough for the millions of people using all-in-one and multifunction devices to turn paper into digital information that they can store and search. Nuance responds to this need by being the first to bundle document management capabilities with a desktop OCR application by adding PaperPort 11 to OmniPage Professional 16. Further, for existing users of PaperPort and PaperPort Professional, OmniPage Professional 16 includes enhanced “scan to” features that make using the two products more seamless and powerful than ever.



• First OCR to Include Electronic and Paper Forms Processing – For organizations needing a better way to implement electronic and paper forms processes, scanning and OCR alone are not sufficient. While sending PDF forms is easy, the challenge is in processing completed forms into data – a challenge that is met with the new release of OmniPage Professional 16. Now users can complete PDF forms on their PC and submit them as either paper or PDF, where OmniPage Professional 16 will automate the data extraction into CSV files suitable for Microsoft Office Excel and database applications.



• One-Button Workflow – In order to distill complex, multi-step tasks into a single click, OmniPage Professional 16 has made creating and using document workflows even easier – and has added native support for the ODMA content management standard and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in order to make storing your documents even easier.



• First OCR to Support 2007 Microsoft Office System Files and XPS – Nuance and Microsoft have had a close relationship on OCR and document conversion for many years, including a collaboration that resulted in PDF Converter, the first-ever solution that accurately turned PDF into Microsoft Office Word documents. The collaboration has continued through the development of export filters for OmniPage that leverage the Ecma Open XML file formats used in 2007 Microsoft Office system applications, including Office Word (.docx), Office PowerPoint (.pptx) and Office Excel (.xlsx). Nuance has also added robust support for the XML Paper Specification, XPS, which enables document sharing and archiving with Windows Vista.

“With OmniPage Professional 16, Nuance has significantly improved the core features that matter most within OCR products – accuracy, speed and application support,” said Robert Weideman, senior vice president and general manager for Nuance Productivity Applications. “More impressive are the robust set of new features, such as 3D Capture for digital cameras and scan-to-redact capabilities, which make OmniPage more valuable to existing users – and more compelling to an even broader audience.”

Pricing and Availability

OmniPage Professional 16 will be available no later than August 7th through Nuance’s global network of reseller partners. OmniPage Professional 16 is $499.99 for individual users, with volume discounts available through the Nuance Open License Program. Upgrade pricing and support products are also available. For additional information on features, pricing and volume licensing programs, please visit www.nuance.com/omnipage or call (1) 800-443-7077.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) 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. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance, the Nuance logo, One-Button Scanning, PaperPort, ScanSoft, and SET are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release that relate to future plans, events or performance are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with market trends, competitive factors, and other risks identified in Nuance’s SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof.