Reminds me of a previous job where IT wouldn't let me install netcat, because "it hadn't been updated since like forever", my response: "because it's fucking done", I was eventually permitted to install it..
I had something similar when we had rewriten old application, and biggest change was move from WebSphere to Tomacat. First question we got was "What is missing in WebSpere?". Nothing is missing it had to much bloat we don't use.