Are you a DNS guru?

I'm doing some research on DNS evolution and would like to understand how (or if)  DNS is changing within mobile carrier networks.   If you work for a mobile carrier and can answer the following questions, you are a DNS guru and I want to hear from you!   My questions:

1. What DNS solution do you use today?
2. What do you use to manage and monitor DNS (e.g., CLI, 3rd party GUI tool, homegrown tool)?
3. Do you currently plan to protect the DNS with any external security mechanisms such as IDS, firewall, DPI, etc.?
4. Do you expect the deployment of 4G/LTE networks to impact your DNS architecture in any way?
5. Will DNS take on the same, more or less importance within your 4G network?  Please explain.
6. How important is a day-to-day management interface vs. CLI or some other programmatic interface?
7. Who in your organization manages your DNS servers (e.g., System Admin, DNS specialist, Operations Manager)?
8. Overall in regards to your network, what you keeps you awake at night?

 Thank you for providing your insights!

Cisco's Flip Flop

Cisco's announcement that they would exit the Flip Video consumer business was a surprise to many, in particular a consumer base of loyal Flip fans. It wasn't that much of a surprise, however, to those who follow tech and even less so to those in the smartphone industry. The story began with Pure Digital Technologies, which introduced the low-priced, simple-to-use Flip in 2007, and was ranked by Deloitte as one of the fastest information technology companies before being bought by Cisco in 2009 for $590 million. The only problem was that Cisco failed to anticipate the rapid evolution of smartphones and other devices like Apple's iPod which provide an easy means to both capture video and share it. Cisco has an opportunity to integrate these capabilities into the Flip but failed to do so. That left the Flip as a cool device for making videos but one more thing to carry around -- and far less capable in other ways than today's smartphones.

The move makes sense for Cisco which is under pressure to show growth. The consumer market has been a distraction from Cisco's five key company priorities – core routing, switching and services; collaboration; architectures; and video. The consumer-oriented telepresence service called "umi" is another example of a compelling idea, but ended up being a high-priced HDTV offering that was too much of a hassle, and too costly, to compete with Skype, web cams and other video chat technoologies. Cisco plans to roll their umi unit into the Business TelePresence product line. Cisco's WebEx service also integrates video so there's the opportunity to leverage umi technology across several business units. Although exiting businesses is rarely an easy decision, it's likely the right one for Cisco.