SAS 9.4 M6 Standard support

[kumarsandip975]

Dear Community,

I have a question regarding the standard support with SAS 9.4 M6.

Following to documentation from SAS(SAS 9.4 & Earlier Releases | SAS Support),

I have doubt - SAS 9.4 M6 release on Nov 2028 , as per standard support for 5 years(Nov 2023).

They mentioned, grace period, what does that mean - Nov 2023 + 5 years =  Nov 2028?

So, My question is - What standard support timelines - should we consider, in terms of standard support - Nov 2023(which already passed) or Nov 2028 or something else 🙂 

Kindly suggest. 

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

This is the relevant support policy for 9.4M6:

SAS 9.4 is under a five-year grace period for Standard Support, starting on January 1, 2020. This five-year grace period applies to SAS 9.4M6 (released November 2018) and earlier SAS 9.4 releases, which were released before 2020.

The five year grace period for M6 started on 1 Jan 2020, so this expires on 1 Jan 2025.

[JuanS_OCS]

This is an excellent question. A lot of folks/companies are having the same question.

The answer is exactly as @SASKiwi indicated. 

Plenty of people are having that question even with what is documented in the policies of SAS Support, so I think the following will help everyone.

The FANS team in the Nordics have just made a presentation about it. Please do check the slide deck 1_SAS Release Update.pdf, in the following link!

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Community-Nordic/FANS-nettverksm%C3%B8te-Generative-AI-nettverksm...

Please don't be afraid that the link and content are not in English - the slide deck is and it is actually really clear.

One last thing: those maintenances will be out of Standard Support, but still be covered by Limited Support. Something to keep in mind.