Amazon Launches Machine Learning-As-A-Service

Amazon Web Services is now really starting to utilize it’s EC2 cloud, offering additional services to customers while the company is taking more steps to bring those services closer to the enterprise IT department. What causes the disruption here is that now in some cases, the services offered duplicate or even start to replace some of the older IT functions. Amazon has been steadily expanding what can be done with its cloud computing platform, claiming to have added 516 new features in 2014. One of the most interesting that I have read about was one introduced at its Amazon Summit in San Francisco and is a service not likely to be found in existing IT departments: machine learning.

There are many of cloud providers out there, but some give you a lot more to work with on top of the infrastructure than others, and that is what machine learning differentiates by. Gartner’s lead cloud analyst Lydia Leong said it another way: “IT organizations cannot treat infrastructure-as-a-service providers like commodities. In the process of explaining how Amazon is different, it was announced that Amazon’s latest figures for growth in 2014 stand at: Data transfers in its storage services are up 102% in 2014 over the prior year; EC2 compute activity is up 93%.

In short according to Amazon: Amazon Machine Learning is a managed service that analyzes a user’s historical data to look for patterns and deploy predictive models. It can examine customer data and find patterns of likely customer turnover or churn. It can find typical issues in customer support. It can isolate and detect the patterns of problem transactions. Machine Learning is used to make 50 billion predictions a week on Amazon.com. Now it is making the Machine Learning API and developer’s guide in the form of wizards available as another Amazon service. It will truly be interesting to see how businesses will take machine learning and make it their own in the future. It has clearly given Amazon a positive leverage to insight in their customers, so watching how other businesses will utilize the infrastructure will be ver thrilling.

To read more on the technology visit http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/amazon-launches-machine-learning-as-a-service/d/d-id/1319868