Applying Machine Learning in Cloud Service Price Prediction: The Case of Amazon IaaS

Abstract

When exploring alternative cloud solution designs, it is important to also consider cost. Thus, having a comprehensive view of the cloud market and future price evolution allows well-informed decisions to choose between alternatives. Cloud providers offer various service types with different pricing policies. Currently, infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is considered the most mature cloud service, while reserved instances, where virtual machines are reserved for a fixed period of time, have the largest market share. In this work, we employ a machine-learning approach based on the CatBoost algorithm to explore a price-prediction model for the reserve instance market. The analysis is based on historical data provided by Amazon Web Services from 2016 to 2022. Early results demonstrate the machine-learning model’s ability to capture the underlying evolution patterns and predict future trends. Findings suggest that prediction accuracy is not improved by integrating data from older time periods.

Keywords

• cloud
• Amazon EC2
• reserved instances
• price prediction
• machine learning
• CatBoost