Dive Brief:
- IBM and SAP announced on Tuesday the cloud-to-cloud integration of the two companies' HR software and services.
- The product integrations are expected to help customers improve their business processes and make fact-based decisions more smoothly and simply about how they recruit and manage their workforces.
- With availability planned for mid-2015, the first offering from this alliance includes a planned integration between the SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and IBM Kenexa's cloud-based HR software Talent Acquisition Suite.An additional integration between IBM's Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and the SuccessFactors Learning solution is planned for later in 2015.
Dive Insight:
Building on a history between the two companies over the past 40 years in both consulting systems integration and business-process-as-a-service solutions, and a number of successful joint deployments, the new agreements between SAP and IBM are expected to provide significant value for each company's customers.
Allowing customers to more easily build upon their capabilities by choosing from a wider set of solutions from both providers, SAP and IBM intend to provide skills and offerings to deploy and operate solutions made up of the combined set of capabilities.
"Any move to improve and better integrate HR software is a welcome one for large organizations such as BP," said Richard Bye, vice president, Global HR Operations & HRIS, BP International Limited. "As a partner with both vendors, we will take a keen interest in the development of the new alliance announced between IBM and SAP."