IT and Standards: A Love Story

Chances are that if you work at a reasonably-sized organization with an IT group, there'll come a time when you ask for some equipment that IT has not yet certified for use in your company.  What happens then?

A long time ago, I worked at a place where all they had certified were 17" LCD panels (this was back in 2007, when 17" LCDs were already considered small).  I asked for a 19" display (same brand, just slightly different model) and was declined, because it was non-standard.  Which is pretty much what I've come to expect from IT at a large organization.

Fast-forward -- my setup here at Netflix is a Macbook Pro attached to a 27" Apple CinemaDisplay.  Pretty nice, but I'm interested in more screen real-estate, so now that 4K displays have dropped in price, I submitted a request two days ago for an Asus 4K display.  Totally outside the spec -- I haven't seen a single other 4K display on anyone's desk here (aside, of course, from 4K displays we've been testing streaming on.  We're Netflix, after all).  Here's the helpdesk ticket.  "CTS" is Client Technology Services, our desktop folks:

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05-30-2014 08:53 PDT - Roy
received from: rrapoport@netflix.com May I please get an Asus PB287Q (4K display, should be about $650) at my desk? 05-30-2014 11:59 PDT - Willie Forwarding to IT-Purchasing to order. Please assign ticket back to me to deploy when delivered. thanks, Willie (order information redacted)

05-30-2014 13:37 PDT - David Hey Jenny, Please order a second unit for CTS to test with. Thanks! David
So to recap: I asked for a new monitor, which wasn't on our desktop support group's radar.  The response was to modify the order -- one for me, one for them to test.  It's worth noting, BTW, that the monitor was ordered prior to the desktop support involvement, because they don't play an approval role for equipment purchases. How do your IT people deal with your non-standard requests?