A Technical Infrastructure to Integrate Dynamics AX ERP and CRM Into University Curriculum

Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management are becoming important topics at the university level, and are increasingly receiving course-level attention in the curriculum. In fact, the Information Systems Body of Knowledge specifically identifies Enterprise Architecture as an Information Systems-specific knowledge area. The revised Information Systems Curriculum Guide from 2010, sponsored by the Association of Information Systems and the Association of Computing Machinery, suggest Enterprise Architecture as a required course with Enterprise Systems and Business Process Management as suggested electives. Implementing the aforementioned courses into the curriculum poses challenges such as providing necessary resources, overcoming institutional constraints, and the lack of hardware architecture for advanced systems such as Microsoft Dynamics AX. This work addresses three critical issues. First, we provide a suggested technical architecture built upon the Windows Server family and Dynamics AX which may be used to implement ERP and CRM, based on Dynamics AX, into the classroom. Second, we demonstrate connectivity between an installation of Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and CRM 2011 in the cloud using the Microsoft Connector for Dynamics. Finally, we suggest a sample scenario and case for implementing ERP and CRM concepts into the university curriculum.