Amazon Forecast

Amazon Forecast is a machine-learning service for time-series forecasting. It analyzes historical data to generate business forecasts for planning inventory, allocating resources, and managing staffing. The service is designed to automate complex forecasting workflows and scale to very large datasets. It uses the same underlying technology used on Amazon.com.

How it works

Amazon Forecast runs in the AWS cloud and is managed through the AWS Console. To get started, you need to upload source data in a required format and define the forecasting goal based on your business context.

Key capabilities

• Builds forecasts from historical time-series data
• Automates parts of model setup and forecasting workflows
• Scales to forecast millions of items at once
• Integrates with AWS infrastructure for data and deployment

Limitations

• Unavailable to new users
• Setup can take time and requires understanding your data structure and business objectives