Let’s face it: The human capital management market has changed a lot in the last few years. With mergers and acquisitions, new entrants and exits, the landscape is changing more quickly than ever. HR buyers have needs and budgets, but what do they want — and what are they seeing in the market?

In late 2011, SAP announced that it was buying SuccessFactors for a cool $3.4 billion. Consumer tech blog TechCrunch panned it as the most boring tech story of that week. Check out the link if you think I’m exaggerating.