The announcement late last week at the HR Technology conference in Chicago that talent management vendor Workstream will offer a set of integrated applications in a SaaS architecture under the name TalentCenter 7.0 may be a signpost of where all hosted services are headed.

Workstream, which through a series of acquisitions now offers solutions for compensation, performance and talent management, succession, and compensation planning, is one of the first vendors to offer a "truly integrated" HR platform and "not just a bunch of disparate applications" sold by a single vendor, according to Leighanne Levensaler, principal analyst with Bersin & Associates.

By revamping separate solutions to a single data model, Levensaler said that TalentCenter 7.0 goes deeper than one-stop shopping.   

"Because they are integrated and are all based on the same data model, they can now do the type of embedded analytics that will give HR users more meaningful information," said Levensaler.

Merging employee performance data with compensation data, for example, allows for a more informed compensation decision and lets a manager use compensation as a retention tool.

In addition to a single user layer that goes across all applications, Version 7.0 now offers built in globalization. Ten languages, can be toggled on and off for such things as system messages, help messages, and built-in guidance for users. Simplified Chinese is one of the languages available to users, according to Gary Damiano, senior vice president of marketing at Workstream.

The analytics features include customizable dashboards with the ability to pull down metrics from the individual applications.

What Workstream is doing for talent management will most likely be the direction for any SaaS provider offering a suite of related solutions for a particular industry or product category.

"Up until now, talent management applications were at the line of business level and tactical. Now they can use the SaaS model at the strategic level to make actionable, quantitative decisions," said Damiano.

TalentCenter 7.0 will be available no later than the end of November. Pricing has not been announced.