Over the years SAS licensing policy, especially for academic institutions, has been a disaster. Academics thrive by building on each others ideas and work. Academics developing statistical and econometric methods are increasingly turning to R. Thats where interactions are taking place more freely.

User communities of SAS do not have a lot to offer in terms of codes for implementation of recently developed methods. For example, SAS has dedicated module ETS, and also the panel procedure. But it is behind R and STATA in offering timeseries and panel estimation methods and tests. Latest tests are not available in SAS, nor the users communities show much interest in the topics. The reason is that users are implementing them in other softwares.

If SAS has now realized the importance of academic market then this is to be welcomed. But it needs to think more strategically about this and make serious effort. If SAS prices itself out of the academic market, it cannot thrive in the corporate market either. This is the writing on the wall, and I think SAS should read it. Right

SAS is longer at the bleeding edge as far as the implementation of new statistical methods is concerned. Somehow it has to get back there. It has the potential, but I am not sure it has the vision and the will to want to be there.