Google Operating System: Open-Source OCR Software, Sponsored by Google

Read the post for other alternatives.  Not a happy market phase for the ISVs trying to sell products in this segment. 

Google sponsors the development of an open-source OCR software at the IUPR research group. "OCRopus is a state-of-the-art document analysis and OCR system, featuring pluggable layout analysis, pluggable character recognition, statistical natural language modeling, and multi-lingual capabilities."
"The goal of the project is to advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies, and to deliver a high quality OCR system suitable for document conversions, electronic libraries, vision impaired users, historical document analysis, and general desktop use," explains Thomas Breuel, who leads the project.

Source: Google Operating System: Open-Source OCR Software, Sponsored by Google