Compuware Inc. is marking its first month as a private company by introducing a new analytics tool that works on data stashed away in their aging mainframes. The launch kicks off the company’s new direction and branding as “the world’s leading mainframe-dedicated software company.”

A week after investors approved its $2.5 billion private equity bid last month, Thoma Bravo LLC spun off Compuware’s application performance management business to focus exclusively on big iron. Topaz, as its newest solution is called, is targeted toward developers rather than the operations professionals usually in charge of migrations. Compuware has wrapped the data transfer functionality at the heart of the software in a graphical interface that reduces a notoriously painful data extraction process to a straightforward drag-and-drop operation.

Topaz visualizes relationships between applications in a dependency map that the company promises says it possible to drill all the way down to the underlying software logic. That’s invaluable for a developer trying to determine whether or not accessing a certain piece of information will break some decades-old program powering a mission-critical process in a far-off corner of the organization.

That scenario is common at the many large organizations that still use mainframes for mission-critical tasks like accounting and billing. Compuware noted that as experienced mainframe pros retire, they are often replaced by people who are unfamiliar with the complex algorithms that were used to manage data in the days of expensive processors and storage. Topaz is intended to demystify the process of finding that data.

The visualization component of Topaz extends beyond big iron to other common systems such as Oracle Database and SQL Server, providing what Compuware describes as a consolidated view of data throughout the entire network.

The company also said it has adopted an Agile development approach in order to deliver updates quarterly – an almost unheard-of pace in the mainframe world.