Companies that run artificial intelligence from several vendors now have a cross-vendor governance option from SAS. SAS AI Navigator, a software-as-a-service product launched October 5 on Microsoft Marketplace, gives AI, data, compliance and risk leaders one inventory of the AI their organization uses and a way to apply internal policies and government regulations to each use case. It covers large language models, AI agents, open source models and SAS's own models, and SAS is giving customers six months of free access (SAS, 2026).

I have not written about SAS on this site before. I pitched a speaking session for the SAS Innovate conference, and Alex Coop on the SAS analyst relations team has done a great job keeping me in the loop on SAS news since. His October roundup had eight items, and the governance launch is the one chief information officers and chief technology officers should read first. Two others, a new sales leader and an HSBC pilot of the SAS Viya platform, show how SAS plans to grow it.

AI Navigator Governs the Use Case, Where Business Decisions Happen

SAS built AI Navigator around the use case, the point where an AI system makes or shapes a decision about a customer or a transaction. In the company's example, a customer service chatbot is the use case, and the agent or model underneath it, such as Anthropic's Claude or Microsoft Copilot, is a governed asset attached to it. Policies attach at the use-case level. That choice matches how auditors and regulators work, because they start by asking what the system decided and for whom, and they get to the model name later.

Each use case gets tracked from experimentation through deployment to retirement, whether your team built the model or bought it. Your teams keep their current build process, because AI Navigator reads across the models and tools they already use.

SAS partners such as Protiviti supply policy packs, which are ready-made question sets and risk classifications a compliance team can apply instead of drafting policy language from scratch. Erasmus University Medical Center, the largest university medical center in the Netherlands, tested the product early through a responsible AI lab it runs with SAS and Delft University of Technology.

A Standalone Product Opens the Door Beyond the SAS Install Base

AI Navigator runs on its own and works for new or existing SAS customers. After SAS Innovate in April, The New Stack described governance as its own product line inside SAS, separate from the analytics platform. A bank running SAS Viya and a retailer with no SAS footprint can buy the same inventory tool through Microsoft Marketplace.

If your organization holds a Microsoft Azure spending commitment, ask your Microsoft account team whether an AI Navigator purchase counts toward it, because the answer decides which budget pays for the product after the free period.

Your Evaluation Should Cover Export and Integration Before Day One

An inventory that holds every use case, owner and policy decision becomes your audit trail within a few months. I apply the same portability test to every product that becomes a system of record, as I did with Databricks in May, and governance raises the bar because auditors can ask for that history years later.

Bring two questions to your SAS account team. First, in what format can you export the inventory and its policy mappings? Second, how does AI Navigator connect to the tools your team already uses for model monitoring and risk reporting? Good answers to both make the product easier to adopt, because your team can start without worrying about where the records will live in five years.

SAS's New Sales Chief Built His Career on Partner Channels

Casey McGee started as Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer on October 1, four days before the AI Navigator launch. He spent 22 years at Microsoft in sales and partner leadership roles (SAS, 2026), then served as chief revenue officer at Lytx and led global partner ecosystem and applied AI work at Google. He succeeds Riad Gydien, who retired after 20 years leading SAS sales.

McGee said that in this market, "trust is becoming the real differentiator." I read his hire alongside the marketplace launch. SAS now has a sales leader who spent his recent years growing revenue through cloud partners, and a governance product sold through a cloud partner's storefront, so I expect more of the SAS portfolio to reach buyers that way.

HSBC Shows the Modernization Path for Long-Standing Customers

HSBC began working with SAS in 1998 and has used SAS technology for analytical and regulatory work in parts of the bank since then (SAS, 2026). HSBC will now pilot SAS Viya, the company's cloud-native data and AI platform, pairing its internal technology teams with SAS.

I see the HSBC pilot and AI Navigator as two halves of one plan. Viya customers get governance built into the platform, and AI Navigator extends that discipline to the models running outside it. If you run an older SAS environment, a global bank testing Viya gives you a reference case to ask your SAS account team about, including which workloads moved first.

An inventory organized by use case gives your auditors the record they ask for first.

Plan the First Use Cases Before the Free Period Starts

Six months gives your team enough time to build a working inventory if you decide the scope before you activate the trial. I would start with two moves:

• Register the use cases that touch customers or regulated decisions first, such as credit approvals or insurance claims, and include the third-party AI your teams already pay for.
• Name one owner for each policy decision the inventory raises, and set a date in month five to decide whether AI Navigator becomes your governance system of record.

Over the next year, I will be watching how many companies with no SAS footprint adopt AI Navigator through the marketplace.