Global people development company Cornerstone OnDemand announced on Monday that it will acquire talent experience firm Saba in a US$1.395 billion transaction that will create a combined company with more than 7,000 corporate customers and 75 million users around the globe.

Saba was a pioneer in the enterprise learning market, having started in 1997 with one of the first ever versions of learning management software to go commercial, and subsequently moved into talent management in 2005. Cornerstone, just two years younger, stayed in the segment and eventually grew into a market leader, far outpacing Saba’s share of the enterprise learning market.

Adam Miller, CEO and founder of Cornerstone, said that the two companies are an ideal complement to each other. “With the combination, our product development team is expected to significantly expand, giving us the ability to develop faster, further increase competitive differentiation, and help millions of people around the world to overcome the skills divide,” he predicted.

Cornerstone and Saba are major providers of learning management systems, meaning that the acquisition represents a huge consolidation of the market. Moreover, by bringing all the product lines of both companies under the same group, it gives the new, combined company more resources with which to evolve and innovate their flagship systems. The combined company will be able to stay far ahead of competitors such as Oracle or SAP.