[sagichmal]

    > How do companies which do this keep the support workload  
    > of developers low enough so that they have time for 
    > development?

Development and operations are not distinct things. A novel algorithm, say, needs to be run to be useful, and the developer is best-equipped to shepherd his or her code through a production environment.

Of course, that's distinct from tier-1 customer support. "Devops" doesn't normally encompass client interaction.