Practitioners use forecasting software emanating from two camps. The first source is the stand-along, dedicated forecast product, such as Forecast Pro, Autobox and others, which just does a variety of forecasting procedures. Typically, these include regression, Box-Jenkins models, exponential smoothing models by Brown, Holt, Winters, etc. The second is the general statistical software product, such as SPSS, Minitab, SAS, Systat, Statgraphics, NCSS and others, which include forecasting as part of many statistical techniques available. There are two main reasons why a practitioner may want to buy and use a dedicated forecast program over a general statistics product. First, some dedicated forecast programs may have specific techniques that the general statistics program may not. These include state space smoothing algorithms, econometric models, transfer function models and others. The second is that some dedicated forecasting products offer a higher level of "automation" which translates into ease-of-use, then the general statistics program group.
Source: Yurkiewicz, J. "Forecasting at steady state?" ORMS Today, June 2008, Volume 35, No. 3: pp. 54-63.