Hosting and managed services provider NaviSite has appointed its head of research and development David Grimes as its new CTO. Grimes will be replacing Denis Martin, who will step down from the role on 1 June, the company announced Tuesday.

NaviSite president Brooks Borcherding, said he was pleased with the appointment. “[Grimes] has been instrumental in the creation of NaviSite’s innovative cloud computing platform which has become the foundation for our next generation managed services,” he said.

NaviSite has gone through a major transition over the past several years and cloud was a big part of this transition. The company gradually did away with its colocation and other services it used to provide, selling off its purely-colo data centers and shifting focus on hosting, managed services and cloud computing.

Today, its portfolio consists of cloud compute, storage and security services, enterprise hosting and managed application and messaging services. These are supported by eight data centers spread across the US and one in London.

In February 2011, NaviSite was acquired by Time Warner Cable as part of a string of acquisitions of cloud-services providers and providers of other data center services by telecommunications companies. Other notable deals were Verizion’s acquisition of Terremark, Cincinnati Bell’s acquisition of CyrusOne and the acquisition of Savvis by CenturyLink.

Grimes came to NaviSite in 2002, when IT-services outsourcer ClearBlue acquired the majority of NaviSite’s shares. Grimes oversaw ClearBlue’s internal and operational support systems.

Prior to joining ClearBlue, he was a lead software engineer at AppliedTheory, working on operational aspects of the company’s hosting business and developing its patented content-delivery technology.