AN up and coming Malvern-based software company is doing its bit to help turn the town into a 21st Century 'Silicon Valley'.

Set up six years ago in the home of ex-DERA computer consultant David Pilfold, Domain Solutions now employs three additional software engineers who specialise in advanced software development at the company's Graham Road offices.

Expansion is now set to continue with the announcement last month that the company has won a £45,000 SMART award from the Department of Trade and Industry to help develop a new computer programming tool called automated Codegen.

Mr Pilfold said: "The idea is that instead of people writing programmes in Java or C++, they actually draw design diagrams and generate software systems from that.

"We really believe in this product and the approach to developing software. The history of software development is littered with projects failing for the same old reasons. We have long thought that software programming is easy. Defining the problem and describing the solution is the hard part and this is what makes software projects fail. We believe this is the solution to the problem.

"I began the company just to do this project and it is great that the DTI has given us an award to support us."

Domain Solutions hopes to begin marketing its innovative product by next September.