RWS expands globally with the AWS Migration Acceleration Program
by AWS Editorial Team | 19 August 2025 | Thought Leadership
Overview
Words shape how we interact with the world and each other. From medical reports to legal documents, articles and white papers, text is the foundation of communication and an essential part of our everyday lives. But words lose their value and meaning when they don’t reach the right audience, in the right language, with the right context. And with the advent of generative AI, text-heavy industries are struggling to manage and effectively target the sheer volume of content being created.
RWS ensures that organizations are understood everywhere, increasing the value of their ideas through AI-driven translation and content management services. It enables hyper-targeted strategies, helping businesses bring ideas to market faster, forge new relationships across continents, and grow with confidence. And RWS ensures that language is always localized for its target audience. Complex legalese is replaced with easy-to-understand language when the target demographic is not versed in law, for example.
Working with highly regulated industries, including government agencies, RWS knows there’s no room for error when it comes to language—or data compliance. Language specialists and pioneers of machine translation, RWS has been crafting language solutions for over 20 years, now holding over 45 AI patents. As the traditional language landscape changes, companies must adapt strategies to stay competitive and maintain relevance in the global market. To make its services more accessible to organizations operating in highly regulated industries and expand its offerings in countries with strict data regulations, RWS decided to migrate from a local Canadian hosting provider to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Canada.
Venturing into new territories
Working primarily with the Canadian government, data sovereignty and security are vital. And as all legal information needs to be translated to English, French, and some of the First Nations languages, RWS must process this data efficiently to fulfil language requirements. In early 2024, AWS launched its new region in Calgary, enabling RWS to bring its language capabilities to new markets and navigate strict compliance in Canada.
A streamlined migration supported by the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) made it possible for RWS to meet its customers’ needs quickly without compromising on service. MAP provides tools that reduce costs and automate execution, helping organizations like RWS accelerate cloud migration and modernization journeys. “The AWS Migration Acceleration Program really helped us deliver on this transition very quickly,” says Nuno Linhares, Director of Cloud Operations at RWS. “Within weeks we were able to stand up an environment and migrate to AWS with minimum disruption to our customers. This has been key to our success: the ability to provide a much better service, much faster, thanks to the help of AWS.”
With a centralized system and enhanced performance, RWS can deliver twice the number of transactions than before. RWS also rationalized its services within a smaller set of application servers. “Not only did we optimize our performance with the migration, but we were also able to reduce the number of servers we maintained from 200 to 40,” Linhares adds.
Leveraging Amazon Aurora simplified operations and reduced operational costs while providing strong disaster recovery and back-up capabilities. RWS can now operate complex systems and move towards solutions that were previously out of its budget, such as data redundancy across regions. By deploying services and backups in multiple data centers and regions, RWS can better protect against potential disruptions. RWS customers in Canada can now benefit from the latest technologies knowing that their data is secure and protected. With AWS as a strategic partner, RWS can access new markets and opportunities for business growth.
Taking operations to the next level
RWS can now help highly regulated industries quickly process vast volumes of text while meeting stringent data requirements. This is particularly useful within the pharmaceutical industry, as RWS transforms verbose, text-heavy content into clear, accurate insights. Using AI in its translation flows provides a value-driven approach to content management that doesn’t break the bank for the company or its customers. Leveraging AWS services, RWS can provide double the output at a fraction of the cost.
This partnership also means that RWS can move towards a more modular service with software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that can scale based on customer needs. The ability to process large amounts of data and text much faster has been instrumental for the company and its growth. “Through our collaboration with AWS, we've accelerated the time to market and time to value for our customers. Being able to adapt to customers’ needs quickly has been a game changer for us,” says Linhares.
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