This post is cowritten by Laura Skylaki, Vaibhav Goswami, Ramdev Wudali and Sahar El Khoury from Thomson Reuters.

Thomson Reuters (TR) is a leading AI and technology company dedicated to delivering trusted content and workflow automation solutions. With over 150 years of expertise, TR provides essential solutions across legal, tax, accounting, risk, trade, and media sectors in a fast-evolving world.

TR recognized early that AI adoption would fundamentally transform professional work. According to TR’s 2025 Future of Professionals Report, 80% of professionals anticipate AI significantly impacting their work within five years, with projected productivity gains of up to 12 hours per week by 2029. To unlock this immense potential, TR needed a solution to democratize AI creation across its organization.

In this blog post, we explore how TR addressed key business use cases with Open Arena, a highly scalable and flexible no-code AI solution powered by Amazon Bedrock and other AWS services such as Amazon OpenSearch Service, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon DynamoDB, and AWS Lambda. We’ll explain how TR used AWS services to build this solution, including how the architecture was designed, the use cases it solves, and the business profiles that use it. The system demonstrates TR’s successful approach of using existing TR services for rapid launches while supporting thousands of users, showcasing how organizations can democratize AI access and support business profiles (for example, AI explorers and SMEs) to create applications without coding expertise.

Introducing Open Arena: No-code AI for all

TR introduced Open Arena to non-technical professionals to create their own customized AI solutions. With Open Arena users can use cutting-edge AI powered by Amazon Bedrock in a no-code environment, exemplifying TR’s commitment to democratizing AI access.

Today, Open Arena supports:

• High adoption: ~70% employee adoption, with 19,000 monthly active users.
• Custom solutions: Thousands of customized AI solutions created without coding, used for internal workflows or integrated into TR products for customers.
• Self-served functionality: 100% self-served functionality, so that users, irrespective of technical background, can develop, evaluate, and deploy generative AI solutions.

The Open Arena journey: From prototype to enterprise solution

Conceived as a rapid prototype, Open Arena was developed in under six weeks at the onset of the generative AI boom in early 2023 by TR Labs – TR’s dedicated applied research division focused on the research, development, and application of AI and emerging trends in technologies. The goal was to support internal team exploration of large language models (LLMs) and discover unique use cases by merging LLM capabilities with TR company data.

Open Arena’s introduction significantly increased AI awareness, fostered developer-SME collaboration for groundbreaking concepts, and accelerated AI capability development for TR products. The rapid success and demand for new features quickly highlighted Open Arena’s potential for AI democratization, so TR developed an enterprise version of Open Arena. Built on the TR AI Platform, Open Arena enterprise version offers secure, scalable, and standardized services covering the entire AI development lifecycle, significantly accelerating time to production.

The Open Arena enterprise version uses existing system capabilities for enhanced data access controls, standardized service access, and compliance with TR’s governance and ethical standards. This version introduced self-served capabilities so that every user, irrespective of their technical ability, can create, evaluate, and deploy customized AI solutions in a no-code environment.

“The foundation of the AI Platform has always been about empowerment; in the early days it was about empowering Data Scientists but with the rise of Gen AI, the platform adapted and evolved on empowering users of any background to leverage and create AI Solutions.”

– Maria Apazoglou, Head of AI Engineering, CoCounsel

As of July 2025, the TR Enterprise AI Platform consists of 15 services spanning the entire AI development lifecycle and user personas. Open Arena remains one of its most popular, serving 19,000 users each month, with increasing monthly usage.

Addressing key enterprise AI challenges across user types

Using the TR Enterprise AI Platform, Open Arena helped thousands of professionals transition into using generative AI. AI-powered innovation is now readily in the hands of everyone, not just AI scientists.

Open Arena successfully addresses four critical enterprise AI challenges:

• Enablement: Delivers AI solution building with consistent LLM and service provider experience and support for various user personas, including non-technical.
• Security and quality: Streamlines AI solution quality tracking using evaluation and monitoring services, whilst complying with data governance and ethics policies.
• Speed and reusability: Automates workflows and uses existing AI solutions and prompts.
• Resources and cost management: Tracks and displays generative AI solution resource consumption, supporting transparency and efficiency.

The solution currently supports several AI experiences, including tech support, content creation, coding assistance, data extraction and analysis, proof reading, project management, content summarization, personal development, translation, and problem solving, catering to different user needs across the organization.

Figure 1. Examples of Open Arena use cases.

AI explorers use Open Arena to speed up day-to-day tasks, such as summarizing documents, engaging in LLM chat, building custom workflows, and comparing AI models. AI creators and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) use Open Arena to build custom AI workflows and experiences and to evaluate solutions without requiring coding knowledge. Meanwhile, developers can develop and deploy new AI solutions at speed, training models, creating new AI skills, and deploying AI capabilities.

Why Thomson Reuters selected AWS for Open Arena

TR strategically chose AWS as a primary cloud provider for Open Arena based on several critical factors:

• Comprehensive AI/ML capabilities: Amazon Bedrock offers easy access to a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, DeepSeek, Luma AI, Meta, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Qwen, Stability AI, TwelveLabs, Writer, and Amazon. It supports simple chat and complex RAG workflows, and integrates seamlessly with TR’s existing Enterprise AI Platform.
• Enterprise-grade security and governance: Advanced security controls, model access using RBAC, data handling with enhanced security features, single sign-on (SSO) enabled, and clear operational and user data separation across AWS accounts.
• Scalable infrastructure: Serverless architecture for automatic scaling, pay-per-use pricing for cost optimization, and global availability with low latency.
• Existing relationship and expertise: Strong, established relationship between TR and AWS, existing Enterprise AI Platform on AWS, and deep AWS expertise within TR’s technical teams.

“Our long-standing partnership with AWS and their robust, flexible and innovative services made them the natural choice to power Open Arena and accelerate our AI initiatives.”

– Maria Apazoglou, Head of AI Engineering, CoCounsel

Open Arena architecture: Scalability, extensibility, and security

Designed for a broad enterprise audience, Open Arena prioritizes scalability, extensibility and security while maintaining simplicity for non-technical users to create and deploy AI solutions. The following diagram illustrates the architecture of Open Arena.

Figure 2. Architecture design of Open Arena.

The architecture design facilitates enterprise-grade performance with clear separation between capability and usage, aligning with TR’s enterprise cost and usage tracking requirements.

The following are key components of the solution architecture:

• No-code interface: Intuitive UI, visual workflow builder, pre-built templates, drag-and-drop functionality.
• Enterprise integration: Seamless integration with TR’s Enterprise AI Platform, SSO enabled, data handling with enhanced security, clear data separation.
• Solution management: Searchable repository, public/private sharing, version control, usage analytics.

TR developed Open Arena using AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon OpenSearch, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, and AWS Step Functions. It uses Amazon Bedrock for foundational model interactions, supporting simple chat and complex Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) tasks. Open Arena uses Amazon Bedrock Flows as the custom workflow builder where users can drag-and-drop components like prompts, agents, knowledge bases and Lambda functions to create sophisticated AI workflows without coding. The system also integrates with AWS OpenSearch for knowledge bases and external APIs for advanced agent capabilities.

For data separation, orchestration is managed using the Enterprise AI Platform AWS account, capturing operational data. Flow instances and user-specific data reside in the user’s dedicated AWS account, stored in a database. Each user’s data and workflow executions are isolated within their respective AWS accounts, which is required for complying with Thomson Reuters data sovereignty and enterprise security policies with strict regional controls. The system integrates with Thomson Reuters SSO solution to automatically identify users and grant secure, private access to foundational models.

The orchestration layer, centrally hosted within the Enterprise AI Platform AWS account, manages AI workflow activities, including scheduling, deployment, resource provisioning, and governance across user environments.

The system features fully automated provisioning of  Amazon Bedrock Flows directly within each user’s AWS account, avoiding manual setup and accelerating time to value. Using AWS Lambda for serverless compute and DynamoDB for scalable, low-latency storage, the system dynamically allocates resources based on real-time demand. This architecture makes sure prompt flows and supporting infrastructure are deployed and scaled to match workload fluctuations, optimizing performance, cost, and user experience.

“Our decision to adopt a cross-account architecture was driven by a commitment to enterprise security and operational excellence. By isolating orchestration from execution, we make sure that each user’s data remains private and secure within their own AWS account, while still delivering a seamless, centrally-managed experience. This design empowers organizations to innovate rapidly without compromising compliance or control.”

– Thomson Reuters’ architecture team

Evolution of Open Arena: From classic to Amazon Bedrock Flows-powered chain builder

Open Arena has evolved to cater to varying levels of user sophistication:

• Open Arena v1 (Classic): Features a form-based interface for simple prompt customization and basic AI workflow deployment within a single AWS account. Its simplicity appeals to novice users for straightforward use cases, though with limited advanced capabilities.
• Open Arena v2 (Chain Builder): Introduces a robust, visual workflow builder interface, enabling users to design complex, multi-step AI workflows using drag-and-drop components. With support for advanced node types, parallel execution, and seamless cross-account deployment, Chain Builder dramatically expands the system’s capabilities and accessibility for non-technical users.

Thomson Reuters uses Amazon Bedrock Flows as a core feature of Chain Builder. Users can define, customize, and deploy AI-driven workflows using Amazon Bedrock models. Bedrock Flows supports advanced workflows combining multiple prompt nodes, incorporating AWS Lambda functions, and supporting sophisticated RAG pipelines. Operating seamlessly across user AWS accounts, Bedrock Flows facilitates secure, scalable execution of personalized AI solutions, serving as the fundamental engine for the Chain Builder workflows and driving TR’s ability to deliver robust, enterprise-grade automation and innovation.

What’s next?

TR continues to expand Open Arena’s capabilities through the strategic partnership with AWS, focusing on:

• Driving further adoption of Open Arena’s DIY capabilities.
• Enhancing flexibility for workflow creation in Chain Builder with custom components, such as inline scripts.
• Developing new templates to represent common tasks and workflows.
• Enhancing collaboration features within Open Arena.
• Extending multimodal capabilities and model integration.
• Expanding into new use cases across the enterprise.

“From innovating new product ideas to reimagining daily tasks for Thomson Reuters employees, we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with Open Arena.”

– Maria Apazoglou, Head of AI Engineering, CoCounsel

Conclusion

In this blog post, we explored how Thomson Reuters’ Open Arena demonstrates the successful democratization of AI across an enterprise by using AWS services, particularly Amazon Bedrock and Bedrock Flows. With 19,000 monthly active users and 70% employee adoption, the system proves that no-code AI solutions can deliver enterprise-scale impact while maintaining security and governance standards.

By combining the robust infrastructure of AWS with innovative architecture design, TR has created a blueprint for AI democratization that empowers professionals across technical skill levels to harness generative AI for their daily work.

As Open Arena continues to evolve, it exemplifies how strategic cloud partnerships can accelerate AI adoption and transform how organizations approach innovation with generative AI.

About the authors

Laura Skylaki, PhD, leads the Enterprise AI Platform at Thomson Reuters, driving the development of GenAI services that accelerate the creation, testing and deployment of AI solutions, enhancing product value. A recognized expert with a doctorate in stem cell bioinformatics, her extensive experience in AI research and practical application spans legal, tax, and biotech domains. Her machine learning work is published in leading academic journals, and she is a frequent speaker on AI and machine learning

Vaibhav Goswami is a Lead Software Engineer on the AI Platform team at Thomson Reuters, where he leads the development of the Generative AI Platform that empowers users to build and deploy generative AI solutions at scale. With expertise in building production-grade AI systems, he focuses on creating tools and infrastructure that democratize access to cutting-edge AI capabilities across the enterprise.

Ramdev Wudali is a Distinguished Engineer, helping architect and build the AI/ML Platform to enable the Enterprise user, data scientists and researchers to develop Generative AI and machine learning solutions by democratizing access to tools and LLMs. In his spare time, he loves to fold paper to create origami tessellations, and wearing irreverent T-shirts

As the director of AI Platform Adoption and Training, Sahar El Khoury guides users to seamlessly onboard and successfully use the platform services, drawing on her experience in AI and data analysis across robotics (PhD), financial markets, and media.

Vu San Ha Huynh is a Solutions Architect at AWS with a PhD in Computer Science. He helps large Enterprise customers drive innovation across different domains with a focus on AI/ML and Generative AI solutions.

Paul Wright is a Senior Technical Account Manager, with over 20 years experience in the IT industry and over 7 years of dedicated cloud focus. Paul has helped some of the largest enterprise customers grow their business and improve their operational excellence. In his spare time Paul is a huge football and NFL fan.

Mike Bezak is a Senior Technical Account Manager in AWS Enterprise Support. He has over 20 years of experience in information technology, primarily disaster recovery and systems administration. Mike’s current focus is helping customers streamline and optimize their AWS Cloud journey. Outside of AWS, Mike enjoys spending time with family & friends.