Amazon Forecast tool launched

The service is based on the technology Amazon uses to anticipate demand for products. Developers can use the technology to build applications for business forecasting.

In addition to forecasting demand and sales, the technology can be used to predict infrastructure requirements, energy needs and staffing levels, according to Amazon. Puget Sound Energy and Accenture are among the companies using the service.

It is now available for customers in the US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and EU (Ireland) and is planned to launch in more areas.

Swami Sivasubramanian, vice-president, Amazon Machine Learning, said: “We’ve built sophisticated, machine learning forecasting algorithms over many years that our customers can now use in Amazon Forecast without having to know anything about machine learning themselves.”