Thanks for the reply. Also interesting to see dev side... we run something similar although a bit more free-form with the internal developers, but that's being pushed into a more controlled environment ;).
I should also say it's a bit heartening to know of other e-com groups out there benefiting from an in-house stack rather than attempting to go 'TO THE CLOUD!'.
A bit about the dev infrastructure here: http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2012/03/13/making-it-virtually-e...