Starting over with the new software though, as opposed to continuing to wait for the software update, would in effect wipe things clean.

Why? Even if it should not be possible to transform the the data into a format the new software could handle (and I don't see why not), you can still keep the data (in a different database or database instance, for example) and build a relatively simple read-only interface. There should be no need to wipe the old data.