The new online program is already generating some 4,000 retirement plans per week, compared with the 1,500 to 2,500 total projected by the firm, said John Dalton, a principal at the IT division of Valley Forge, Pa.-based Vanguard Group.

The mutual fund and retirement planning company completed a pilot program to test the new SOA-based Web interface to its Vanguard Financial Plan (VFP) service in March. The program automatically generates customized 10-to-20-page investment plans based on data entered by a consumer. Capacity Challenges

"That volume creates lots of capacity challenges," Dalton said. The company's original plan called for the service to use up to 2% of the capacity in Vanguard's Unix servers, but the unexpectedly hefty use of the system requires 10% to 15% of system capacity, he noted.

"We are in the process of increasing the number of and speed of CPUs and will vertically scale out and run services on different boxes over time," Dalton said.

The service previously required that consumers provide data to financial planners over the telephone. The planners then entered the data into the VFP application and sent the resulting plan back to the client. That service had generated about 15,000 reports a year, Dalton said.