CORBA on steroids? ICE
I wanted to investigate into ICE for a long time ... but could never make. Now it at least is linked on my desktop. ICE is a result of Michi Henning thinking about how to make CORBA right ;)
The Internet Communications Engine (Ice) is a modern alternative to object middleware such as CORBA™ or COM/DCOM/COM+, with support for C++, Java, Python, PHP, C#, and Visual Basic.
Ice is easy to learn, yet provides a powerful network infrastructure for demanding technical applications. Ice shines where technologies such as SOAP or XML-RPC are too slow, or do not provide sufficient scalability or security. For a comparison between Ice and CORBA, please see this page.
Ice is free software, available with full source, and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Commercial licenses are available for customers who wish to use Ice for closed-source software.
ICE has a C# binding, amongst others…
Here is a nice and brief introduction to ICE.