Do I need web services?

[Patrick Allmond]

I found out that a large (let's call it enterprise) application will have to
have an internet facing/hosted server. So we will have an internal server
which will have access to port 1433 and the database directly (possibly on a
another machine) for the database layer. Then will have an internal IIS
Server to talk to it. Then we will have one on the DMZ. The one on the DMZ
will not have access to port 1433 - probably only port 80.

Should we start planning for web services in the business layer with
multiple front ends coming in via different routes ? Depending on the front
end you might be able to access the database directly. So we could multiple
front ends with each one configurable as to how it will connect to the
business/application layer.