IBM has wrapped up its $1.3 billion acquisition of Kenexa, IBM said Tuesday, adding the company's cloud-based recruiting and talent management applications to IBM's software portfolio.

The acquisition, announced in August, adds to IBM's social business and human resource offerings. Kenexa also provides consulting services around its applications, and IBM is expected to link the Kenexa applications to its business analytics software to help businesses collect and analyze data generated by the system.

As the deal closes, Kenexa's 2,800 employees in 21 countries become IBM employees, IBM said. The acquisition also brings Kenexa's 8,900 customers into the IBM fold.

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Major IT vendors have been scrambling this year to acquire developers of cloud-based talent management applications and business-oriented social networking software. On the talent management side, SAP bought SuccessFactors in February for $3.4 billion, while Oracle acquired Taleo for $1.9 billion and SelectMinds.

In social networking, Microsoft paid $1.2 billion to buy Yammer, while Oracle acquired several small companies including Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect.

IBM said it would continue to support Kenexa's customers and enhance the company's technologies while offering IBM's broader product and service portfolio to Kenexa clients.

"The combination of Kenexa's world-class human capital management solutions and IBM's social business and analytics leadership uniquely positions IBM to help clients generate real returns from their social business investments, while helping them to be more competitive in their markets," said Alistair Rennie, IBM general manager, social business, in a statement.

PUBLISHED DEC. 4, 2012