I threw out that prototype soon after the talk. At the time, there weren't a lot of other engineers at the company doing Erlang, so maintenance was considered to be a long-term problem. I'm glad we made that call.
There are so many presentations of the form "We're using Erlang/Scala/whatever, it's so awesome!", but so few followups when they give up on the idea for production..
It's hard to sustain some alternate technology in the face of common knowledge. Rarely does technical advantage outweigh hard-won operational experience.
As much of a fan of Erlang and Riak as I am, you did make the right call. If you only have one or two people on the team who want to know that technology, then it isn't a smart move to base a core piece of technology on it (Erlang) just because it might be the best answer. Sometimes an okay answer that everyone is familiar with is much better.