Today, Kronos announced the acquisition of Deploy Solutions. A couple of observations...

• Deploy had been shopped for almost a year with nearly every potential acquirer passing on the deal. Not necessarily the hottest, most sought after deal out there.

• It is speculated that the company has raised around $100 million to date with much of the capital coming from Chairman, Ray Stata, father of CEO, Nicole Stata. Rumors are that the acquisition was valued at a fraction of the capital invested.

• What is Kronos actually buying? If you believe the press release, they are getting "...expertise and technology to penetrate new markets". If you ask me, they are eliminating a competitor and getting a few nice customer brands. That's about it. What's surprising is that Kronos has been on the hunt for a salaried recruitment vendor for some time, but yet settle on another niche, hourly-focused recruitment vendor.

• Kronos has yet to prove they can play in talent management and make acquisitions work. Many of my financial analyst friends would argue that the Unicru acquisition has been a disappointment so far.

• The good news in this acquisition is that we are starting to see the hourly market pick up and their are only a few vendors that can really play there including Vurv , Taleo and Peopleclick. Most companies still do a poor job in hourly recruiting (as I wrote recently on the Human Capitalist ) and the market is ripe for true innovation, delivering jobs to where the candidates hang out online such as Facebook, Myspace, etc.

I thought it was quite ironic the acquisition was announced on Halloween. Time will tell who got the trick and who got the treat.

Based on our unscientific, limited response poll on the Center of Excellence over the past few weeks, I hereby declare[ Lawson|http://www.lawson.com] as the HCM Battle winner. A great recap of the battle can be viewed here . Keep in mind, many non-buyers may have influenced the poll, but nonetheless, I think this is a fairly accurate response based on observations from the audience and listening to people comment as they left the room. Lawson did a great job of showing "Spaces" and even some "futures" with Facebook integration.

Source: Knowledge Infusion

Who lost? Obviously, Oracle missed the mark in the presentation, partially because of usability (since much of the presentation focuses on the interface). Both Workday and Lawson showed stuff that was "cool", as the gentleman in front of me called it, demoing new, AJAX/Flex-based usability. Oracle showed a user interface that is about 5 years old.

Who won and lost at the same time? SAP. SAP won, of course, by Oracle faultering. Their lack of presence, though, did nothing to show they are making any progress in HCM or talent management (which presumably they are). What was interesting was seeing David Ludlow, head of HCM at SAP sitting in the back of the room.

Congratulations to Lawson.

Ever been to a conference, sat in a great session and, towards the end of the session thought, "man...I would sure love this session to continue"?

Last week at the HR Technology Conference, Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion, hosted a session called "The Talent Management Panel" with some of the leading thinkers/practioners in HCM technology including:

• Liviu Dedes, VP Organizational and Leadership Development, Aramark

• Valerie Norvell, VP Training and Development, Luxottica/Sunglass Hut

• Nickolas Nyhus, VP Workforce Planning & HR Compliance, Ameriprise Financial

• Bryon D. Abramowitz, VP, Enterprise Services, Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc.

• Mary Ruiz, VP HR Technology and Processes, Yahoo!

As many were walking out of the room, the theme was consistent, "that could have kept going for a couple of hours". Well...I'm going to attempt to keep it going. With our Center of Excellence (COE) launch last week, we have created a community called "Talent Management" where we will be extending the discussion with the panelists. Click here to access the discussion (one caveat, you must be a registered member of the COE but don't worry, its free). Feel free to also reply to the discussion or create a new discussion. Let's keep the dialogue rolling!

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EdcW4fSJnUU"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EdcW4fSJnUU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>