Upcoming support milestones for SAS 9.4 customers

If you're a SAS 9.4 customer, take note of some important events that take effect in 2025. This article provides just a high-level overview. Read the full details about affected products (including release numbers and versions) in this article from Kimberly May, Senior Vice President of SAS Technical Support.

The next SAS 9.4 maintenance release

First, we are excited to announce that SAS 9.4M9 was released in June 2025. In addition to updates for 3rd-party components and database connectors, SAS 9.4M9 supports newer operating systems:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.10 and 9.1 and later

Oracle Linux 8.10 and 9.1 and later

IBM AIX 7.2

Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025 families

See support.sas.com for the full list of operating systems supported for each release.
SAS 9.4 Maintenance 9 | Watch the on-demand webinar
Readers ask: will there be more maintenance releases for SAS 9.4? As mentioned in the SAS 9.4M9 webinar, a "Maintenance 10" is planned for SAS 9.4. Release timing has not yet been announced, but typically maintenance releases are spaced at 18-24 months apart.

Support updates for older SAS 9.4 releases and product versions

As a reminder, the most recent generally available maintenance release for the SAS 9.4 platform is SAS 9.4M9, released in June 2025. Prior to that, SAS 9.4M8 released in January 2023, and is under Standard Support until February 2028. SAS 9.4 maintenance releases are available at no additional fee to existing 9.4 customers.

Several older SAS 9.4 maintenance releases and product versions will move from Standard Support to Limited Support in 2025. Limited Support is not a recommended support level for production-type systems. For example, Limited Support does not receive security patches and has reduced severity level handling. Refer to the SAS Support Policy for additional information.

Extended Support available for older SAS releases and product versions

To maximize their SAS investment and keep systems secure, SAS encourages customers to run the latest SAS software and apply hot fixes regularly. However, we recognize that some deployments, such as certified or verified systems, are not easy to change in coordination with the SAS release schedule. To address this gap, we are offering Extended Technical Support as an additional service for software that has moved to Limited Support. Contact your Account Executive for more information and to see whether your system qualifies.
SAS Support Updates | Get the details on product updates
Upcoming support milestones for SAS 9.4 customers was published on SAS Users.