I was browsing TSS and found this article. It's a good read for any seasoned Maven 2 developer, talking about repository theory and a piece of software called Artifactory. I like that Artifactory combines caching of external artifacts with a nice Web-UI where you can manage your repository. The article does a great job of explaining why and when to use Artifactory.
Artifactory looks like a real helpful piece of software. I'll stick to my dead simple repository setup for now, but I am going to give it a try real soon. The caching alone makes it worth using, as I have found in the past it speeds up Maven's execution time.