US firm ServiceSource is to create an additional 120 jobs this year through an expansion of its European headquarters in Dublin.

Established in San Francisco in 1999, ServiceSource opened a Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) headquarters at Cherrywood, Co Dublin in 2005 which now employs 180.

Due to rapid growth in its clients' business it plans to increase its multi-lingual sales staff to 300 by the end of this year.

The company is a specialised sales organisation that sells additional services and collects licence revenues from customers of its client companies. It is focused on the high-tech and healthcare sectors and sells into more than 100 countries in 26 languages.

"We are focused on taking our clients' service business and annuity revenues and making sure they retain customers but also increase their dollar spend," explained Crosbie Burns, an executive vice-president with ServiceSource.

Currently the company has $2.5 billion (€1.7 billion) in contracts under management.

Mr Burns said a large part of the service it provides is collecting information on its clients customers, such as what products they are using and who the key executives are.

He said there was potentially even more demand for the com-pany's service in Europe than the US.

This is because 75 per cent of technology is sold through distributors and resellers so the vendor often has limited information on the users of their products. Analysts Gartner have valued the technology services market in EMEA at $45 billion.

"We believe that growing service share is strategic to our clients' business success as they look to more ways to increase revenues and earnings in a maturing technology market," Mr Burns said.

Clients of the company include Microsoft, Adobe, Sun Micro- systems, Symantec, AT&T, Juniper Networks and GE Healthcare.

Yesterday's expansion was supported by IDA Ireland and was announced by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin.