We've released Version 9.0.1 of NMIS 9 today. This is a late beta release that works pretty well and we're getting close to a general release.
It's possible to run NMIS 8 and 9 in parallel on a single system, so experimenting  with the next generation of NMIS is quite easy.

The  NMIS 9 Release Notes page outlines what news each NMIS 9 release brings.