It sounds to me (and I know this won't be a popular opinion here) that the original IT department was overstaffed. A printer never out of paper? No projector ever found with a dead bulb?
Much like there being a "healthy" amount of unemployment (~3%, I recall?), there's a healthy amount of smaller items not met. It sounds like the company was overpaying for IT.
What would you say about a building maintenance team that left 3% of the burnt out/bad light bulbs around? Most of the stuff he's talking about can be monitored and caught before they become a real problem or dealt with as soon as they are discovered. (Projector bulbs have expected lifetime, network printers can tell you when they're out of paper, etc.) To me, it just sounds like they have solid monitoring and procedures in place for preventative maintenance.
Given the anecdotal basis of the account, there may be a good bit of selection bias on both sides of the cut here. He may be forgiving or forgetting those times when something did slip (either because it was so rare or because it was so easy to get fixed), and might be extremely harsh on the failings in the future, due to it being the 18th time it's happened that week or just "I told you so!"
Much like there being a "healthy" amount of unemployment (~3%, I recall?), there's a healthy amount of smaller items not met. It sounds like the company was overpaying for IT.