The Brazilian government is planning a massive procurement exercise of Microsoft products over the next few months.

Federal government bodies have until November 11 to show interest in buying Microsoft software. The goal of the joint purchasing process is to generate cost efficiencies and standardize the IT applications portfolio across departments.

The agreement with Microsoft will then allow government departments to buy products as required at previously negotiated prices within a 12 month period without the need to launch new tendering processes.

Products most likely to be bought by departments are Windows 10, Windows Server and the Office suite.

The intended purchase would be the biggest purchase of Microsoft products by the Brazilian government to date and also marks a departure from the open source model that had been encouraged within the public sector since 2003.

The idea with open source was to reduce licensing costs while stimulating local companies to develop products for the government, but the lack of skilled professionals and scarcity of specialized providers meant the initiative lost momentum.

While the joint Microsoft procurement aims at reducing spend in the long run, it's unlikely there will be a shopping spree, as public sector bodies in Brazil are under pressure to avoid any new spending commitments and departmental budgets have already been considerably reduced.