AN AMERICAN software company which has its UK head office in Amersham has expanded its presence in the country with the opening of a research and development centre.

Serena Software UK Ltd has set up the R&D centre at its office in White Lion Road and expects to take on ten new employees by the end of the year.

The centre will focus on the major financial sector and will address the specific needs of European customers based on feedback from customers, technical support, pre-sales technician and consultants working on site throughout Europe.

The centre will be financed from Serena's headquarters in California and will be headed up by Ailish Berry, Serena's vice-president of European operations.

Ailish said: "The European development centre will play a large part in raising our profile within Europe. Serena invests 12 per cent of it annual revenue (FY 2002 revenue projections are $130 million) on research and developmentwith project announcements traditionally coming directly from our US-based R&D centre.

"The European development centre will now play an integral part in ensuring our products have country specific requirements incorporated in all future developments."

Steve Downes, lead developer at the UK development centre said a critical difference between the US and European markets are differing legal requirements.

Serena will be using its own development and authoring tools to ensure software developed concurrently in the UK and US and is reconciled and tested before being released to customers.

The European development centre is currently working on the next generation database (DB2) option to Serena's Change Man product, already used by European customers including American Express and Experian.