Backed by Infomatica, a major vendor of data-integration solutions, Purisma will focus on companies with a high degree of customer interaction.

While the broader category of master data management is getting much attention from the enterprise, according to Pete Daffern, CEO at Purisma, the heart of any master data hub comes from recognizing the association between customer accounts and relating various organizational customer data from parent and subsidiary companies.

A complete view of the customer also enhances the reliability of analytics that are run against the data, Daffern said.

The targeted approach that recognizes connections between customer identities rather than the broad sweep of all customer data is a good strategy, said Aaron Zornes, chief research officer at the Customer Data Information Institute. With the three major enterprise software vendors -- Oracle, SAP, and IBM -- making significant investments in the customer data hub space, smaller companies need to specialize.

"Purisma is very good at (taking advantage of) the b-to-b hierarchies in the world, the legal holdings [of companies]," Zornes said.