Vurv SAP acquisition

Looks like Vurv being acquired by SAP was nothing more than a red hot smoking rumour?!  We even have a response from a real Vurv employee - in denial of course.  Not that we could realistically expect anything else other than silence.

There are also a few comments on the same issue at The Human Capitalist.

But rumour or not there is some sense in the thought i.e. SAP and Oracle buying a Talent Management Technology vendor. 

Talent Management is a global event and on the lips of every CEO.  (I know it is getting to be a boring statement!)  And of course the board room is the favoured haunt of Oracle and SAP but, they don't really have a decent TM solution.  Of course they will claim that they have, but unless you are on the latest release a number of modules are not available so the customer has no choice but to look elsewhere; enter Vurv, Taleo, Kenexa, Jobpartners, Stepstone and a myriad of many other plying their talent management technologies!

So it makes sense that the big boys want to be picked to play but if they don't have a pair of boots guess what; they won't even get on the subs bench.  It's only a matter of time and although there is a very long list of players the real shortlist is not that big!

I think it is more likely that SAP will buy a European player such as Stepstone or Jobpartners (they hope) but SS would need to ditch the advertising whereas JP may not have a big enough customer base.

Meanwhile, Oracle won't mess around and will buy Taleo; 1) To get the biggest/best, 2) To p*ss off the ex-Peoplesoft people - again!

No smoke without fire!  But is it all as good as the vendors say?