Liquid Web, a web hosting and cloud services provider, has hired Chris Lema as its new vice president of products and innovations.

Lema will develop innovative products to complement Liquid Web’s traditional managed hosting suite of product offerings, as well as integration with its recent Cloud Sites purchase from Rackspace. He brings more than 20 years of software development and product development experience to Liquid Web.

“Liquid Web is a place that can offer me an opportunity to leverage all my talents and experience, while also being a place where I can stretch, grow and keep innovating,” Lema said. “I normally say most hosting companies only have one product — hosting — and that’s no place for a product guy. Liquid Web is different and I’m looking forward to aligning our visions for the web-hosting community.”

Most recently, Lema served as an independent industry consultant focused on the WordPress community, sharing his insights via a daily blog, e-books, public speaking and product strategy.{ad}

Liquid Web’s WordPress community currently supports more than 250,000 WordPress sites and onboards, on average, one site every hour of every day. The Liquid Web Partner Program was launched in March and offers the company’s suite of products in three ways.

“We are very excited about Chris joining the team,” said Joe Oesterling, Liquid Web’s CTO. “His experience working with our target customers, web-dependent SMBs and the creators who serve them, will accelerate our quest to build more innovative products for this underserved community. His audience expertise combined with his knowledge of CMS and eCommerce technology platforms means simple, scalable solutions that make life easier for designers, developers, agencies and SMBs.”