LDN - Luminis Developer Network

We are in the process of implementing LCMS, but I am not really sure we are using enough of its features to warrant using it. The only REAL thing we need it for is to provide some control of what channel authors can access what channels.

My questions are:
1)are you using LCMS? Do you use it for the portal only or institution wide?

2) If you are not are you using something else? What are you using and how hard was it to implement?

3) what do you do about "channel security" if the answers to the above questions did not answer it?

I've asked a few people these questions before, but I would like to see what many people across this community think.