"Keith Watson" keith.watson@kewill.com
Can any IRC experts out there give me some pointers on setting up a closed IRC channel for the developers within my company? [...]
http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/ircd/ if you do want to use a server. I'd suggest hybrid-7 as a starting point, but I'm not following it closely these days, so take that with a bucket of salt. Elsewhere on that site is help on IRC in general.
Do I need to set up an in-house server or are there servers out there we can make use of?
It depends how much security matters to you. Even if you are using a locked channel and all connect to the same server (not merely the same network) over SSL, there is still a risk of the server operator intercepting you. If you're not using SSL, using more than one server, and so on, it weakens it further.
Setting up an in-house ircd is not too bad if you don't need to expose it to the internet. You might also find that a jabber server could do what you want and might be simpler if you know something about XML, XMPP and so on aren't that interested in IRC.
Hope that helps,