WTS Completes JD Edwards Application Hosting Solution For Alpharma

WTS, Inc., a leader in application hosting for JD Edwards enterprise software and Alpharma Inc. (NYSE: ALO), a global specialty pharmaceutical company, announced the successful completion of Alpharma’s implementation of a hosted JD Edwards solution. Alpharma’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne software supports employees throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, and Thailand. WTS’ hosted solution supports Alpharma’s financial and manufacturing systems, enhanced forms printing requirements, and real time data replication that provides Alpharma’s rapid, disaster recovery solution.

Alpharma migrated their JD Edwards environment from their in-house operations to WTS’s JD Edwards hosting service. This project was successfully completed on schedule and under budget by a dedicated team of business professionals from Alpharma and WTS. It involved several of Alpharma’s departments, including their JD Edwards business group, network staff, helpdesk, business users, and WTS’s application and information technology teams.

“The migration of our JD Edwards solution to our outsourcing provider WTS, was a major 2006 objective,” states Mr. Richard Cella, Executive Vice President and CIO for Alpharma. “The technical complexity and compliance requirements of this project demanded precise planning and flawless execution, which is exactly what our joint teams achieved. We met our objective of delivering this project on-time and at an operational cost below our internal costs for the same service.”

“The transition to WTS’ services was seamless to Alpharma’s users,” said Sam Rediess, WTS Vice President of Customer Service. “Alpharma is a company who is required to meet the many demands and regulations the FDA has placed on their business. These requirements are very different than other industries. We were able to deliver their
JD Edward solutions without any interruptions to their business. Additionally, Alpharma and WTS have jointly defined key processes for change management, system availability, and software migration controls to meet the Sarbanes Oxley requirements of Alpharma.”

“This strategic initiative for Alpharma required a thorough vendor selection process before we determined who would provide our hosting services”, said Glenn Pinnel, Director of Business Applications for Alpharma. “We selected WTS as our service provider because of their extensive JD Edwards customer base, the excellent customer references we interviewed, and the wealth of JD Edwards knowledge they have within their technical and applications staffs. These key values differentiated WTS from their competitors.”

“As we planned for the changing environment and activities of our business, we prepared a list of key benefits required from our information technology solution,” said Joe Gagliardi, Alpharma’s Project Manager for the JD Edwards migration. “We knew the requirements and the constraints of our current configuration from running EnterpriseOne on our internal systems. Our systems needed to be more flexible, provide improved performance, and allow us to streamline the Oracle software upgrade process in order to maximize system availability. We have accomplished this and more by partnering with WTS. Additionally, the WTS help desk has given Alpharma the 24x7 technical support needed to run our global organization.”


About WTS
WTS, Inc. provides a wide range of services for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World customers including Hosting, Remote Applications Management, Disaster Recovery and complementary product support. Our customers benefit from an industry-proven solution that increases efficiency, enables business and technology change, and reduces IT risk. Oracle® (NASDAQ: ORCL) holds a significant equity interest in WTS. Founded in 1997, WTS is a privately-held corporation, with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Additional information about WTS is available at www.wts.com.


About Alpharma
Alpharma Inc. (NYSE: ALO) is a global specialty pharmaceutical company with leadership positions in products for humans and animals. Alpharma is presently active in more than 60 countries. Alpharma has a growing branded franchise in the chronic pain market with its morphine-based extended release KADIAN® product. In addition, Alpharma is among the world’s leading producers of several specialty pharmaceutical-grade bulk antibiotics and is internationally recognized as a leading provider of pharmaceutical products for poultry and livestock.