Over the last few months, a number of headlines have declared the learning management system dead. But reports of its death may be premature.

While the obituary is not yet written and calls for its end are a tad overblown, the role of the LMS is changing in ways that are significant and important. I had a conversation this morning with Matt Shlosberg, managing director of consulting firm Hanna Concern, and something  he said grabbed my attention. His statement: The LMS is becoming the competency management system.

Traditionally, the LMS has been the portal for employees to access development and for their employers to track and monitor their compliance and usage. In recent years, vendors have built out systems such that it has also become a robust repository of content in multiple formats for a variety of purposes, from compliance and skills training to management and leadership development. Each new feature has made the LMS more and more useful for those purposes.

But as organizations more tightly integrate talent strategies with their business priorities, the LMS is being asked to do different things. And, as the executioners state, the LMS has been found wanting in significant ways.

The LMS is effective as a learning portal but not so great as an integrated workforce management tool. Knowing that 80 percent of your managers have taken the required harassment training, while important, doesn’t translate into a useful, up-to-date gauge of their skills, abilities and competencies and the overall health of your talent pipeline.

For some time, vendors have recognized the limitations of their LMS offerings and have built modules and connections to make them more robust and integrated with other parts of the talent management suite, from recruitment systems to succession planning modules.

At the same time, rather than raise the white flag, those vendors have also recognized the enduring importance and value of learning management to their offerings, and rightly so. Case in point is Taleo’s acquisition of Learn.com and the continued integration of many vendor offerings to create a robust talent management suite that brings together sourcing and recruitment, on-boarding, assessment, performance management, development and succession planning, all overlaid by the modern collaboration and networking tools you’d expect.

But is it still a pipedream? Skeptics note the many roadblocks to integration, not the least of which is the need for a sophisticated client base to purchase those sophisticated products. What do you think, fair reader? Is the LMS as we know it going the way of the dodo or is it just shifting and evolving in a meaningful way?

(Thanks to Dan Pontefract and his always intriguing TrainingWreck blog and Plateau’s Ed Cohen for providing the link fodder.)