The Cloud and the Database

As we travel further and further down the "cloud" path, new opportunities seem to present themselves on an almost daily basis.  There is a lot of good blog's in the wind, but for today I'll stick to the database side of things.
The other day, a request came in asking if our standard developers could be given access to do bulk-uploads via the windows tool (we use SFDC as one of our cloud applications).  This was an interesting question since in the past any and all updates were done by our operations team. The full SLDC was expected to be in place and the change would go in the next scheduled maintenance window - which would be weeks away for us.  However, this is the cloud and shouldn't we be able to make a change on the fly - or at least after business hours without any expected impact.  I think this is what our business partners expect, and partially believe is what "agile" gives you: the ability to make dynamic updates on a very short cycle.  I agree to the definition of agile, but not to how it is interpreted.
That is only one of the issues that caused me a bit of headache.  As I explained to the development team that they were probably not going to be given the rights to update the database via the bulk-loader, I received a very sad response:  "we are loading data into Salesforce, not into Oracle".  Of course this spawned a long drawn out email that explains how the cloud works and some updates to our lexicon.
So here I am, trying to figure out how to detail new policies and procedures to deal with the database in the cloud.  I have a couple of obstacles that I still need to address before I think anything can be done.   The first being informing/training for everyone on how "cloud" based platforms work.  I (wrongly) made the assumption that everyone understood it the way I did.  Secondly, I need to find some best policies/practices and help drive some enterprise standards for deploying and managing change in the cloud.  I have found a few books and wikis that give some guidance, but nothing yet that provides all the answers I am looking for.
As I consume more information and begin developing my own plan, I will keep the updates coming.