Saba Software and IBM have announced they are working together to help businesses harness and develop talent.

The companies are combining expertise to offer organizations a threefold approach to people management. This includes human capital management services and consulting from IBM and advanced enterprise learning solutions from Saba. In addition, IBM will offer a new Learning Accelerator for WebSphere Portal that is based on Saba Learning.

The combination of IBM and Saba can help businesses save time and money by reusing the same IT infrastructure for learning that is used for their corporate intranet and extranet, the companies said. In addition, enterprises can capitalize on the many opportunities for informal and formal learning created by the "always on," collaborative and social-networking-focused culture of today's businesses. By combining learning opportunities with portal-based collaboration, employees, customers, and partners can participate in broader informal learning channels making them more effective and productive.

"Effective human capital management strategies and tools are critical to improving the employee skill base and facilitating team collaboration, which ultimately helps an organization align workforce and business strategy to create high-performance people, while managing administrative costs," said Tim Ringo, global leader, IBM Human Capital Management practice.

"IBM's approach of combining our industry leading portal software and Human Capital Management consulting services with Saba's world-class learning software is a winning combination for our customers," added Larry Bowden, vice president of portals and mashups, IBM Lotus.

"Saba looks forward to expanding our relationship with IBM to offer our proven learning management solutions and expertise to the Lotus community," said Bobby Yazdani, chairman and CEO for Saba. "With Saba, Lotus customers will have a robust platform to improve key business processes, increase revenues and reduce costs."

As part of Saba's unified people management platform, Saba Learning is a comprehensive management system for formal and informal learning that enables organizations to identify, manage, develop and measure the capabilities and knowledge of people throughout an enterprise, as well as empower them to connect and contribute their expertise. Saba Learning provides organizations with leading capabilities for catalog and curriculum management; compliance, continuing education, and competency management; for-profit training; content development and management; virtual learning; informal learning; and collaboration.

IBM Global Business Services' worldwide human capital management practice provides advisory and implementation services to enable enterprise performance through improved workforce effectiveness. The IBM Workforce & Talent Solutions (WTS) offering integrates services from Human Capital Management practice with a wide range of tools, technologies and IBM Research projects, including Saba's learning and people management applications. WTS is the first holistic offering in the talent management marketplace that addresses the science of people management throughout the entire employee lifecycle.

Since Saba and IBM support open standards, Saba's learning capabilities can be surfaced in context within WebSphere Portal. This combination can also be expanded to other IBM collaboration tools allowing people to easily locate experts, share information and participate in broader communities of interest.

When Saba's learning capabilities are coupled with WebSphere Portal, businesses can empower employees to work smarter. The personalization capabilities of a portal can display customized views of the applications and information a person needs based on their job role. Surfacing formal learning opportunities within this context can help employees relate what they are learning to the task at hand. In addition, portals help make learning easier by putting content in a context where it is most meaningful to end users.

Customers with active maintenance agreements for IBM Lotus Learning Management System or IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning will be entitled to Saba Learning licenses at no charge provided they purchase support for Saba Learning from Saba.

Human capital management services and consulting from IBM and the IBM Learning Accelerator featuring Saba Learning are currently available. Existing IBM customers on current maintenance will have until May 2010 to take advantage of the Saba licensing offer.

For more information on IBM WebSphere Portal: www.ibm.com/software/lotus/portal/value

For more information on IBM Human Capital Management Services: www.ibm.com/gbs/humancapital

About Saba

Founded in 1997, Saba (NASDAQ:SABA) is the premier global provider of strategic human capital management (HCM) software and services. Saba's people management solutions are used by more than 1,300 organizations and over 17 million end users worldwide. Saba's solutions increase organizational performance by aligning workforce goals with organizational strategy; developing, managing and rewarding their people; and improving collaboration.

Saba product offerings address all aspects of strategic HCM and are available both on-premise and OnDemand (www.saba.com/products). To ensure long-term customer success, our global services capabilities and partnerships provide strategic consulting, comprehensive implementation services, and ongoing worldwide support.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Saba has offices on five continents. For more information, visit www.saba.com or call +1-877-SABA-101 or +1-650-779-2791.