[toast0]

> - No platform/language buy-in (each service/unit can do things however it needs to)

If you want to have a mostly BEAM system, but still have some flexibility here, you've got options.

a) beam for distribution and on every node; but for non-beam processing, beam supervises and sends the work through pipes/unix sockets/etc

b) dist for distribution, but some nodes are just 'C nodes'; OTP comes with a C library to connect to dist, which should be enough to be usable in most languages that can call into C libraries.

c) mostly beam and dist, but some nodes require other means to communicate. It's not as tidy, but if you need something, you need something. The real world is messy, whatever.