Domino administrators and IT managers are understandably excited about the Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) feature of Domino 8.5, which stores document attachments outside of Domino databases. DAOS promises to reduce storage costs by eliminating multiple copies of the same attachment in different documents or databases. But money is tight at most companies, and just because something is “new and cool” and promises to save money isn't a good enough reason for adopting new software and features. You need demonstrated results to justify implementing anything new.

Here is some real-world deployment data to give you an idea of what to expect with DAOS and help you decide if deploying DAOS is right for your organization. I present four actual production deployments of DAOS and the results yielded by each. My summary and analysis of the results illuminates the specific areas in which DAOS reduces your costs. I also discuss the types of environments that stand to gain the most from DAOS and point you to a free tool you can use to predict and quantify your own savings.