Maybe JSR 262 is also worth to be mentioned here.
"JSR 262 defines a connector for the JMX Remote API that uses Web Services to make JMX instrumentation available remotely. Clients do not have to be Java applications, but can be."
It is very likely that JSR 262 will be part of the next Java version (Java 7).
There is a java.net project for a JMX WS connector which depends on WiseMan project. Wiseman is an Open Source Java implementation of WS-Management standard.
