Nice little intro to indigo article.

In Java terms. Indigo would represent covergence of RMI and JAX-RPC, with options for async messaging in the process.

I worry about how seriously interop works in this world, a world where to get full indigo semantics you need a full WS-* stack. Which presumably why there is so much mention of IBM in the story: interop with WebSphere is the only thing that matters to either vendor.

My other concern is how closed world all this is. By adding all the functions of CORBA to SOAP, WS-* replicates the old world of distributed computing, only with underpinnings (HTTP, XML) not designed for that particular role. If you just embrace HTTP and XML you can avoid treating so many things as unwelcome legacy, and instead as valid currency. Example: how is indigo going to handle a 302 'moved temporarily' response from an endpoint? I haven't used it yet, but I am pretty certain its going to barf, as that is required of the WS-I BP1.0 compliance rules.