LEAD powers imaging development

When looking at the imaging software development toolkit industry, LEAD Technologies stands above the competition. For the third year in a row LEAD has won an SD Times 100 award, this time in the APIs, Libraries, & Frameworks category.

We had a chance to sit down with LEAD Technologies to discuss LEADTOOLS Version 18’s successes, and to get a preview of what’s next for them.

LEAD Technologies has a deep passion for creating the world’s greatest imaging SDKs, but not at the expense of losing touch with its roots. “It’s an honor to once again be awarded the SD Times 100,” said Moe Daher, Chairman and CEO of LEAD Technologies. “It is a testament to the hard work and corporate vision of our team, but it is also a reminder that we wouldn’t be here without our customers. LEADTOOLS is more than just a product. It is also a partnership where our customers can help influence and provide feedback for what LEADTOOLS can do for their projects.”

LEAD Technologies is more than just LEADTOOLS
For decades, LEADTOOLS has been regarded as the gold standard in the imaging software development community. LEAD’s feature-rich SDKs are praised as being both programmer-friendly and powerfully customizable. LEADTOOLS includes several OEM-ready applications with source code for document and medical imaging that developers can simply rebrand and ship. Alternatively, those needing to do more on their own will find the low-level access that they need and will still save thousands of man-hours compared to coding everything on their own.

The SDK provider can be just as crucial as the SDK itself, and choosing LEAD Technologies as a company has its advantages beyond the features found in LEADTOOLS. With nearly 25 years of experience in imaging development, you can trust LEAD’s expertise to help satisfy your imaging requirements with minimal stress. No matter what features you need, chances are LEAD has already coded it, tested it and has had thousands of customers deploy it. Lastly, since LEAD is dedicated to offering the most comprehensive suite of imaging components and development services, you can enjoy the simplicity of one vendor relationship, one license agreement, and one support contact.

LEADTOOLS 18 – A success from the very start
LEADTOOLS Version 18 was and continues to be an exciting release for LEAD Technologies. Debuted in January 2013, it specifically addressed the challenges software vendors are facing in today’s increasingly mobile world with LEADTOOLS Anywhere. With LEAD porting its SDKs to WinRT, iOS, OS X, Android, HTML5/JavaScript and Linux, developers armed with Version 18 can meet demand and bid on their contracts with confidence knowing that their learning curve and time-to-market are drastically reduced.

“We saw more and more developers branching out to mobile development,” remarked Daher. “Our strategy was to offer mobile versions of our SDKs so that those developing image-enabled desktop applications (especially enterprise-level applications) could also offer mobile versions. The idea was to sell mobile SDKs to not only mobile developers, but also to provide any developer the functionality to easily extend their desktop applications to mobile markets.”

LEADTOOLS Anywhere empowers developers creating image-enabled mobile applications in two primary ways: native libraries and zero-footprint. With native libraries, programmers can make applications designed and optimized for specific hardware. These applications can also be sold or distributed within the platform’s respective app store.

Zero-footprint, cross-platform applications are gaining popularity due to the unique advantages in reaching multiple platforms with a single codebase. LEADTOOLS accomplished this through its extensive HTML5/JavaScript libraries, and made it possible to create Web applications that lack nothing in features, performance and user experience. Fast and responsive client-side features such as viewers, annotations, image processing, multi-touch gestures, DICOM and PACS are all possible with these powerful new libraries. To round out the full-scale feature-set, RESTful Web services for OCR, Barcode, PDF, file format conversion and more are easily accessible through JSON.

In addition to the new opportunities afforded by LEADTOOLS Anywhere, the core document, medical and multimedia technology within the LEADTOOLS .NET and Windows API libraries are still LEAD’s primary platform and are employed by tens of thousands of developers worldwide.

Looking forward in 2014
When asked about LEAD’s future, Daher was equally ecstatic. “We’re always looking for ways to further enhance our Document and Medical Imaging product lines. When Version 19 is released later this year, we will have a new Document Image Viewer, support for additional barcode types, and major improvements to the LEADTOOLS Advantage OCR engine. Our Medical Imaging products will also receive big updates including an improved Medical Image Viewer control for desktop and Web, new image processing algorithms, HL7 messaging and enhanced DICOM Server components.”

Though we can’t predict the future, betting on LEAD’s continued success in the imaging SDK market is as safe a wager as they come. You will be hard-pressed to find a company more stable, customer-focused and driven by a pursuit of excellence as LEAD Technologies.