Web services communication 

IT IS active 2013 supports the communication between the backend and frontend with the web services capability in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. You will require a SQL database to use the NAV web services. With a NAV native database, the communication will be through the NAS (Navision Application Server).  With the IT IS control light included in IT IS active 2013 now, you can decide whether you want to use the web services or NAS for the communication with a SQL database.  The communication is divided into three stages. The data from NAV is sent from the backend over IT IS control light to the SharePoint Portal. This allows you to decide whether to communicate to your SharePoint portal on MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queue) or on HTTP. Here different endpoints in IT IS control light are addressed. The message queues are sent to the MSMQ connector and the HTTP communication is working via WCF web services (Windows Communication Foundation).The communication logic contained in IT IS control light translates the data from the NAS to pure HTTP.

Since you do not need to purchase additional NAS instances you will probably save a lot of money with the NAV web services. Especially for large portals it could makes sense to decide for the communication over the web services. 

“With web services you could save huge amounts at licensing costs for the NAS instances”

Architecture overview for IT IS active 2013 with the embedded IT IS control light.