Won’t the software used incur additional costs for the suppliers?

The bidding documents are prepared using commercially available programs such as Word, Excel, Autocad, etc. in a format which can be accessed by software which is freely available over the Internet. In addition, there are plans to allow bidding documents to also be put online in a “pdf” version. Here also, the format can be accessed with software (Acrobat Reader) that is freely available over the Internet.

The same is true for the compression software (“.zip” files) which will be used to minimise the size of the bidding documents to reduce their download times.

Finally, as the provision of software that will allow the secure transmission of bids is the responsibility of the administration, this tool will be downloadable from both the "ixarm.com" and "achats.defense.gouv.fr" portals.