SAP dropped a whopping $3.4 billion on human capital management software company SuccessFactors back in December. Two months later, the deal has finally closed and SAP isn’t wasting any time in releasing a product roadmap for SuccessFactors now that the company is part of the SAP family.

As the New York Times reported back in December, SAP saw SuccessFactors as one entry point into the cloud. Forrester analyst Paul Hamerman told the publication at the time that “The cloud has been a small part of SAP’s revenue stream, about 2 percent; the deal adds to the revenue base and shows SAP’s strong commitment to the software-as-a-service business model.”

Today, SAP says that SuccessFactors’ software will be combined with SAP solutions to provide a comprehensive offering to clients. SAP will continue to offer its own Human Capital Management on premise solution but will be pushing SuccessFactors’ performance, compensation, recruiting and learning management products in the cloud. The talent management components from SAP’s software will be selectively innovated on, says the company.

Basically, SAP’s existing HCM products will be the on-premise offering and SuccessFactors will be deployed in the cloud. There are currently no plans to phase out any SuccessFactors products, says SAP.

SAP explains that data and analytics will be a focus area for further innovations in both SuccessFactors and SAP’s HCM offerings. SuccessFactors software will be integrated with SAP’s data analysis product HANA.

The human capital management industry is huge and big enterprise companies are betting that the cloud is the future of this space. Salesforce just announced the acquisition of social performance platform Rypple, and will be launching a new product and SuccessFactors-rival, Successforce. Oracle just bought talent management software company Taleo for $1.9 billion a few weeks ago. With all these companies throwing their hats in the ring, it should be interesting to see which one can emerge as the leader.

In what is perhaps the most boring piece of tech news to come out of this week, German software giant SAP has today announced that it will buy the US-based SuccessFactors, a company that “helps organizations align strategy with objectives and manage people performance to ensure execution & results,” IN THE CLOUD, OF COURSE.

I think this means that it provides enterprise software for human resources, but you can never be too sure with these incredibly dull companies. I am too bored to Google it. In fact, I am literally bored to tears writing this, like I am seriously crying here in my local coffee shop and everyone is looking at me weird and I just want to show them this press release so they’ll understand or something.

The deal is all cash, at $40 a share (a $3.4 billion valuation) and will most likely close early next year.

If you are actually interested in finding out more, or having trouble sleeping and need something to push you over the edge, SAP will be holding a conference call on Monday, December 5th, at 3:00 pm CET / 9:00 am EST where you can learn details about the transaction.

Fin.

Plateau Systems’ Learning Management Systems is generally usually used by Human Resources departments for the management and delivery of learning and training across organizations. Plateau Systems’s Talent Management Suite includes applications for learning management, performance management, career and succession planning and compensation management.

Plateau currently brings more than 350 customers to SuccessFactors, including General Electric, the U.S. Air Force and Capital One. Based on initial estimates, the combined companies will have more than 15 million users. After the deal closes, Plateau’s SaaS based LMS will be integrated directly into SuccessFactors’ BizX suite.

The acquisition price is fairly high for SuccessFactors, whose largest acquisition to date has been social enterprise software company CubeTree for $50 million. But clearly, SuccessFactors sees tremendous potential in aligning its business with human capital management.

Jambok’s SaaS enables companies and communities to share knowledge in the the cloud. Ideal for the “informal learning” (everything that’s not official training) part of corporate communications, the Jambok platform allows you to post video, audio, photos, as well as screen capture your desktop in order to share knowledge within your organization. Users can also rate, tag, and comment on content on both the web app and via mobile apps.

SuccessFactors plans to integrate Jambok’s social video creation and sharing tools into its social collaboration offering as well as other areas of the Business Execution (BizX) Suite, including social recruiting.

This is SuccessFactors’ fourth acquisition in a year. The cloud software giant bought social enterprise software company CubeTree for $50 million, Inform for $40 million, and cloud-based analytics platform YouCalc for an undisclosed amount.

Cloud-based software company SuccessFactors has just announced a recent acquisition—Danish company YouCalc, which lets business create and share custom reports and analytics on data from the cloud. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Along with the acquisition, SuccessFactors is also debuting its Calculator In The Cloud platform, which leverages YouCalc’s technology. Now the company’s business users can analyze data from the cloud in realtime for insight and predictions. The platform can analyze data from SuccessFactor’s BizX Suite as well as data from third party cloud-based applications. The idea behind the new offering, says Brad Mattick, senior director of global product marketing financials for the company, is to allow business to aggregate and mashup data from a variety of sources for insight. For example, you can pull in data from an ERP system, sales metrics from a CRM system or customer satisfaction stats from call center software.

Users can also use the platform for simulations and “what-if” scenarios based on mash-ups of data from any cloud-based app. Analysis from Calculator in the Cloud can include a current sales pipeline, available cash, employee satisfaction and what percentage of the workforce is working towards the company’s strategic plans.

While the platform is launching today, Calculator in the Cloud has been beta tested by a number of enterprise companies, including McGraw-Hill.

SuccessFactors has bit on a bit of an acquisition spree in 2010, buying social enterprise software company CubeTree for $50 million, and Inform for $40 million.

I’m not entirely sure what those all mean, but the basic idea is that SuccessFactors has become even more “Web 2.0″ with its latest release, the 71st since its founding in 2001. Employees can use SuccessFactors to track their professional goals, and companies can use the software to conduct performance reviews and assess competencies. There’s a bunch of other capabilities built-in that help with recruiting and the distribution of stocks and bonuses as well.

From the looks of things, SuccessFactors tries to do a lot of things at once. Not only does the software intend to help with employee management, it also serves as an employee directory and organizational mapping service. If I were an employee of a company that used SuccessFactors, I think I would actually find it much more useful for finding information about my colleagues than for charting developments in my career. But perhaps others are compelled to structure their goals explicitly and use it to determine whether they are competent enough to fill a new position.

SuccessFactors went public just this past November. Analysis of the IPO can be found here and here.