After three years on the outside looking in, HP Canada’s monochrome laser printers are back on the all-important National Master Standing Offer, the list that defines what products government department and agencies can purchase.

David Varricchio, business development manager for the public sector at HP Canada, said getting monochrome back on the list will allow the company’s partners to come at government bodies with end-to-end solutions during this year-end.

“Today, we have an opportunity to sell solutions in all categories the federal government tendered – we weren’t in that position yesterday,” Varricchio said. “From an HP perspective, we couldn’t be more excited about the news.”

For Ottawa-based PrintersPlus, an HP Canada partner with a healthy business in the government, having the full HP family back on the NMSO makes things easier. Alec Milne, president of Printers Plus, said the company deals with “just about every government division,” and that many of those units have standardized on HP. And the company’s inclination is to lead with HP when it cane.

“We’ve been forced to suggest other things to them – things we wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable with,” Milne said.

Returning to the NMSO, according to HP, are a number of business monochrome laser printers, including the P4515x, P4015x and P2055dn.

Varricchio said HP is already getting the word out to its authorized channel partners in the government space, and developing plans with its partners to make sure the vendor’s gear is well-represented as the rush towards government year-end gets going in earnest.

“This didn’t start today, it’s something we’ve been working on for a number of months,” he said.

While it’s often difficult to quantify how big a government year-end will be because purchasing decisions are done strictly at the departmental level, Milne said he’s expecting a solid buying season.

“Our sense this year is that people are anxious and ready to buy,” he said.

Varricchio said he expects to see a lot of government units looking to optimize their print mix in 2011, to save costs and green their businesses. He said partners can make the most of the opportunity by coming into government accounts with a consultative approach and building out those optimized environments. Among the benefits of going all-HP for printing needs, the company touts security, fleet management and energy consumption advantages over mixed-vendor deployments.