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.