I am looking for an inter-process communication facility that can be used between languages and/or environments running on the same or different systems. For instance it sh
You need to probably look at something like ActiveMQ. In EAI patterns, the JMS bus is heavily used for the purpose of integrating several modules written in several diffetent languages and running on several systems. To me, Such Enterprise Message Bus like ActiveMQ fits your need. Let me know if you are looking for something else.
-Shamik