Well it has been an exciting week in HR technology. Not only have more than 20 companies released new products and service offerings, but I am giving birth to my first child!

To help you get a good understanding of all the exciting changes in the world of HR systems, we are launching our most comprehensive-ever research on the world of Performance and Talent management. This research summarizes all our in-depth discussions with more than 40 different solution providers, their clients, and our research members.

The bottom line is this: in this hot market nearly every major solution provider is growing, adding key new features in succession management, talent pooling, and more end-to-end performance management. The world of compensation and pay-for-performance has now become the new beachhead for these systems, and all the vendors are working hard on new tools for social networking, workforce planning, and analytics.

The research is comprised of two reports: The Essential Guide to Performance Management Practices and The Essential Guide to Performance Management Systems. Our press release and website provides all the details on the study and how to access the reports.

In the course of researching the performance management systems market for this study, we found the pace of technology innovation staggering. With advances in software design and delivery models, most solution providers are now able to release new feature sets and enhancements on a quarterly (or even monthly) basis!

For fear that our solution provider profiles and current capability matrices would be out of date no sooner than our 270+ page systems report was released, we spent a considerable amount of time in the evaluation process reviewing product roadmaps and development environments for upcoming releases.

Our analysis of the solution provider's current capabilities and future releases is included in each profile. Most of the following announcements made this week are also reflected in our report:

1. Authoria - Announces New Succession Planning and Employee-Development Capabilities
2. Cornerstone OnDemand - Announces New Social Networking Platform
3. Infohrm and HumanConcepts - Announces Partnership to Launch Integrated Workforce Analytics Visualization and Modeling Solution
4. Plateau - Announces Next Generation of Flagship Talent Management Suite
5. Saba - Announces Workforce Planning and Talent Management Enhancements
6. Taleo - Announces Compensation Management Strategy and Cloud Computing for Talent Management
7. Salary.com - Announces Advanced Succession and Workforce Capabilities Management
8. SuccessFactors - Announces Recruiting Management for Mid-Sized Companies and the Lastest in Workforce Analytics
9. Softscape - Announces Softscape TalentGenetics(TM): Predictable Workforce Metrics to Help Manage Talent in Down Economy
10. Halogen - Announces Learning Management with eLMS in Release 9.0

I am especially proud to be part of this dynamic industry, and as I plan to take a few months off with my new child, I hope you find this research very helpful in sorting through the ever-changing world of technology.