DataPivot quadruples space with new Boston-area office lease

The cybersecurity firm DataPivot has signed a 22,000-square-foot lease in North Andover, quadrupling its space in town.

By Grant Welker – Senior Reporter, Boston Business Journal

Story Highlights

What’s This?

• Giles Westie’s DataPivot signed a 22,000-square-foot North Andover lease.
• The cybersecurity firm plans to hire 10 more employees this year.
• Westie expects DataPivot’s revenue to double within three years.

Giles Westie took a big leap 2015 when he decided to quit his job at the software company Commvault and start his own cybersecurity firm.

Now Westie is making another. He’s signed a 22,000-square-foot lease in North Andover that quadruples the space occupied by his data protection company, DataPivot. The
company has 35 full-time employees today, and Westie plans to hire 10 more before the end of the year.

From there, Westie, DataPivot’s CEO, envisions room for 100 people in the new, larger space. He didn’t disclose DataPivot’s revenue but said it should double in the next three years.

DataPivot’s new lease makes for a notable instance where a suburban-Boston company is growing in place — in this case, with Westie seeing the area as ideal for recruiting from the region’s abundant tech workforce.

“The decision to stay in the Merrimack Valley and North Andover was an easy one,” he said.

Giles Westie is the founder and CEO of North Andover-based cybersecurity firm DataPivot.

DataPivot

Westie, a Babson College graduate, started in tech sales in 2003 working for a series of companies in data protection and disaster recovery. He spent seven years at New Jersey-based Commvault, where he said he got the entrepreneurial itch to start a similar firm of its own.

“I always wanted to start a long-term successful company,” he said.

And Westie means long term.

“A lot of businesses have an exit plan,” he said of founders who look to sell after a certain number of years. “We don’t have an exit plan at all. We want to stay in business for years and years.”

Westie started DataPivot in 2015 out of his basement, fulfilling an entrepreneurial cliche. He moved into the current North Andover office in 2019.

DataPivot’s own headquarters site shows how rare it can be for a fast-growing company to stay put. Today it is based in a building that once housed an office for Schneider Electric, which now has a bigger presence in downtown Boston’s Winthrop Center. And it’ll be moving into 50 High St. in North Andover, a former office for footwear company Converse, whose headquarters is now at Boston’s Lovejoy Wharf.

Amid today’s high office vacancy rates, DataPivot could have found a size space that wasn’t as dramatic of a jump from its current 5,000 square feet. But Westie said he didn’t
want to have to move again as the company continues its growth — and he’s bullish.

“It won’t be full full immediately but it gives us room to grow,” he said. “I’m super motivated for what’s next.”