RWS achieves global-scale speed, without compromising data sovereignty

An invisible force behind the world’s biggest brands

“We provide services for more than 85 of the world’s biggest brands,” says Dorte Schou, SVP, Enterprise Technology Services at RWS. “Our role is to help organizations operate globally and bring their products to market faster.”

Operating across 31 countries, RWS relies on over 7,000 employees and a vast network of freelancers to deliver technology-enabled language, content, and IP services. Its clients span highly regulated sectors from technology and finance to healthcare and pharmaceuticals where secure access is critical to ensure client needs for security and compliance is met.

Infrastructure built for lean teams at large scale

RWS manages a complex environment of 3,000+ business-critical Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops users. “The people who use Citrix are our production teams,” says Schou. “If it doesn’t work, production goes down, and we don’t deliver to our clients.” 

Despite the stakes, the company runs a remarkably lean operations team – an efficiency that stems from a deliberate focus on simplicity. Instead of issuing full desktop environments to every contractor, RWS provides secure access only to the specific environments needed. This keeps complexity away from users and administrators, accelerating onboarding while reducing overhead and risk. 

Standardization is central to this approach. “Using Citrix App Layering we're able to build one operating system, one set of tools, which we can customize and deploy quickly across regions,” explains James Hogg, Senior Cloud Platform Engineer, RWS. This allows a small team to support a diverse workforce handling a wide range of languages and formats. 

Because RWS deployed the platform globally rather than by region, production teams access the same tools regardless of location. New joiners are productive immediately, updates are rolled out once, and issues are easier to diagnose. The result is a resilient operating model that supports global production while accelerating onboarding, reducing security incidents and lowering operational costs.

Accelerating M&A success through secure standardization 

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are central to RWS’s growth, but they introduce a recurring challenge: a fragmented landscape of legacy systems. Acquisitions often arrive with disparate Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions and unmanaged devices that do not meet RWS standards. Integrating these fully can take years, conflicting with the need for immediate collaboration. 

By using Citrix as a strategic security bridge during acquisitions, instead of forcing complex network integrations on day one, the organization enables immediate access to critical workflows while keeping existing security boundaries intact. This approach allows newly acquired teams to become productive quickly, without increasing risk or disrupting established environments. 

“Citrix gives us a way to move fast without over-integrating too early,” explains John Flynn, Head of Technical Architecture, at RWS. “It lets people work across different security domains while we take the time to design the right long-term integration.” 

Additionally, Citrix Secure Private Access allows employees to access critical internal sites from devices not yet onboarded into the RWS estate. This supports rapid onboarding and business continuity. “With the Citrix Platform we can enable people to work more smoothly across the group, even if they’ve come from different organizations, while still protecting our security boundaries,” adds Schou.

Securing growth without sacrificing agility

The collaboration between RWS and Citrix has evolved into a genuine strategic partnership based on shared goals and mutual understanding. As the two organizations continue to grow in tandem, RWS now has access to the full breadth of the Citrix Platform and is focused on making the most of its capabilities. The group is actively evaluating Citrix Secure Access with Chrome Enterprise to assess the business value it can deliver, maximizing the benefits to streamline costs and drive innovation.  

RWS is one of the most data-intensive users of the platform, globally, and as such, it pushes the technology to its limits. But working hand-in-hand with Citrix the group maintains high-speed performance, across massive software volumes, by actively monitoring performance and addressing any issues. This alignment is critical as RWS explores web-enabled ways of working to maintain aggressive market leadership. 

“We want to be able to deliver in the fastest, most secure way for our clients, that is better than anyone else in the market space,” Schou says. While RWS takes security “very, very seriously,” the group must also match the agility of its dynamic clients. “That's what the Citrix Platform allows us to leverage,” adds Schou. “It enables us to enhance our security posture while supporting our growth ambitions.” 

By converting its complex IT challenges into a seamless, secure workflow, RWS ensures that when the world’s biggest brands need to speak to their customers, nothing gets lost in translation.