Compuware

Inception and early years

In 1973, Peter Karmanos, Jr., Thomas Thewes, and Allen B. Cutting established Compuware Corporation. Their vision was to help people do things with computers by providing their clients with professional technical services, allowing them to focus on their own core businesses. In 1977, Compuware introduced Abend-AID, its first software product. Designed to detect bugs and suggest corrective action in corporate IBM mainframe systems. The release of Abend-AID established a product strategy for Compuware, alleviating the peaks and valleys of revenue that occur in the services business. By 1978, Compuware opened its first remote office to service the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore area.

1980s

Compuware launched its File-AID product line. Using a request-driven interface, File-AID products help programmers and developers quickly and easily find, create, extract, transfer, fix, convert, load, edit, age, and compare data. This allows developers to focus on developing and maintaining applications that meet business needs. Compuware also announced Playback, the company's first automated testing tool. Later, Compuware moved from its Southfield location to a new corporate headquarters in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Compuware also acquired its first European subsidiaries during the 1980s. Compuware launched Powerbase with Datazoom, a very user-friendly, non-programmable, relational database for MS-DOS through Compuware/Power-base Systems, Inc.[1]

1990s

Throughout the 1990s, Compuware acquired several companies, building their position in the marketplace, including Centura Software, XA Systems, EcoSystems Software, Uniface development environment, Hiperstation, Coronet, Direct Technology Limited, DRD Promark, Inc, NuMega, Data Processing Resources Corporation, Programart, and the CACI Products Company.

In 1992, Compuware completed its initial public offering (IPO) of stock trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol CPWR. In 1994, Compuware commenced a secondary public offering to raise cash, and named Joseph A. Nathan President and Chief Operating Officer. By April 1998, Compuware had more than $800 million in sales. At the end of 1998, Compuware surpassed the US$1 billion revenue mark. In 1999, the number of Compuware employees grew considerably, prompting the company to build a new headquarters building in Campus Martius Park in Detroit, Michigan.

2000s

Since 2000, Compuware has acquired e-business services firms BlairLake, Inc., Nomex, Inc., Covisint, LLC, Adlex, Inc., SteelTrace, Changepoint, Proxima Technology's Centauri Business Service Manager. In 2003, the company's 30th year of existence, Compuware completed construction on its new world headquarters building in downtown Detroit. On November 9, 2009 Compuware acquired Gomez, Inc. for its application performance management software.

2010s

On July 6, 2011, Compuware acquired dynaTrace software. On September 25, 2013 Compuware subsidiary Covisint announced pricing of Initial Public Offering. On January 8, 2014 Compuware announced the planned divestiture of its Changepoint, Professional Services, and Uniface divisions to Marlin Equity Partners for $160 million. Compuware completed a spin-off of Covisint on October 31, 2014.

In December 2014, Compuware was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, LLC.

Thoma Bravo Acquisition and Privatization

On September 2, 2014 Compuware and private equity firm Thoma Bravo, LLC, jointly announced that Compuware had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Thoma Bravo for approximately $2.5 billion. After finalizing the deal in December 2014, plans were announced to separate Compuware's remaining Mainframe and Application Performance Management (APM) business units into two distinct companies. The mainframe business unit retains the Compuware name and is exclusively focused on mainframe software. Christopher O'Malley is the current CEO. Compuware's former APM business operates independently under the new Dynatrace name with John Van Siclen operating as CEO.

As a result of the privatization, Compuware stock is no longer listed on the NASDAQ.

Agile DevOps Practices

Beginning in 2014, around the time of Thoma Bravo, LLC’s acquisition, Compuware began shifting from a Waterfall development methodology to Agile development. With the release of Compuware Topaz—a solution that allows developers, data architects and other IT professionals to discover, visualize and work with mainframe and non-mainframe data in a common, intuitive manner—on January 5, 2015, Compuware has since released net-new mainframe software on a quarterly basis.

In an interview with Jim Probasco of Benzinga, Compuware CEO Chris O’Malley said the company had adopted a startup mentality and that he supported an “agenda of innovation where our strategy is, every quarter like clockwork, to introduce updates to the existing base of technology as well as bringing out net new products.”

“We’ve completely retooled development,” he added, “and gone from the traditional ‘waterfall’ model that usually has 12 to 18 month development cycles [...] (to one that is) quarterly with an ‘agile’ methodology.”

By pursuing technology integrations and partnerships with companies focused on non-mainframe DevOps software, Compuware has allowed “CIOs to shift responsibility for mainframe applications to enterprise DevOps staff with mainstream skills using popular tools within today’s mainstream culture of agility and innovation.” According to eWeek, “O’Malley said he believes that large enterprises that fail to bring Agile and DevOps best practices to their high-value COBOL applications will remain competitively disadvantaged against smaller, nimbler market disrupters.”

Integrations and Partnerships

Since being acquired by Thoma Bravo, LLC, Compuware has forged multiple integrations and partnerships.

Acquisitions

Compuware company has made the following acquisitions since going private:

Locations

Compuware is a global company operating in North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. The company's world headquarters are at One Campus Martius, Detroit, Michigan 48226. Compuware moved its headquarters and 4,000 employees to Downtown Detroit in 2003. Prior to the move, the headquarters were in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In December 2014, Compuware announced that Bedrock Real Estate Services and Meridian Health jointly purchased the Compuware headquarters building. Compuware still runs its global operations out of the building.

Products