Viya vs 9.4

Have heard that during 2023 that no 9.4 sales were allowed, except under rare extenuating circumstances.

Does this restriction also apply to renewals? And if so, and if the renewing customer does not want Viya, what is the messaging at that point to said customer?

If 9.4 renewals are allowed, it stands to reason that those customers will eventually become aware that "new 9.4 sales are not allowed". That can not be confidence inspiring to thw customer. What is the messaging from SAS to those customers? How can customer retention effectively occur when the customer knows 9.4 is under the kn--e of planned obsolescence?

Are Viya sales good enough to generate at least $3B of gross revenue in an environment where 9.4 usage is being discouraged by SAS?

Tricky questions. Hopefully SAS has a plan. What is it?

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I tried the "SAS" search on Indeed. I also found 5218 jobs. Then I dug into the listings.

What I found was that "SAS" was lumped in with a statement such as "Skills in Python, R, SPSS, SAS, or similar packages". The term "SAS" was used to refer to statistical analysis skills, not SAS software specifically.

A search for "Viya" turned up a company with "Viya" in the name.

Perhaps the person who found the first number of SAS jobs was able to filter and exclude the descriptions of listings that were non-specific about SAS and Viya as the analysis language?

LinkedIn may have broken their job search algorithm. On other sites, SAS is more relevant than COBOL. Viya, though, has few job postings anywhere.

Indeed.com:
Viya 0
SAS 5,218
COBOL 840
Python 64,497

Dice.com:
Viya 1
SAS 496
COBOL 304
Python 6,713

Whoa, SAS is less relevant than COBOL, a mainframe legacy language. Shocking!

I sure am enjoying R Studio.

Viya is dead and irrelevant, and SAS9 is rapidly heading that way too.
The best measure of this are the number of jobs asking for it...LinkedIn jobs in the US....
Viya 5
SAS 668
Cobol 4,000
Python 370,000

These are very telling numbers. Nobody is doing anything with Viya, SAS is now significantly less relevant than Cobol, and if you want to remain relevant, learn Python (or some other popular open source tech).

I assume that renewals constitute most of the $3B, and that this restriction does not apply to them.

If, as stated in other threads, Viya is faster than alternative platforms, that is a market. Some customers are willing to pay for performance, instead of using free alternatives such as Spark.

But it does seem self-defeating to urge customers to use Viya, rather than SAS :-(.

"Are Viya sales good enough to generate at least $3B of gross revenue in an environment where 9.4 usage is being discouraged by SAS?"

Unfudged FY2023 revenue should answer that question.

Thread regarding SAS Institute layoffs

Viya vs 9.4

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