I'm using Axis (1.1 Beta) on a real production server
(WAS) quite successfully with nice speed and
performance to connect a swing GUI to server side
(EJBs). Also have deployed and run it on Orion and
OC4J too. It's all ok.

As of a plugin for IDEA, I've not seen any (better to
check IDEA's plugin home page) but why don't you
automate all the Axis stuffs with the build tools out
there (Ant for instance) and free code generators ?!