Micron Electronics Buys Lightrealm

Hungry to expand its Web hosting business,Micron Electronics Inc. Wednesday purchased leading Web hosting company Lightrealm Inc.

If Micron Electronics (MUEI)
follows through with its plan to snatch up Lightrealm, it would vault them
into the elite realm of being one of the top five Web hosting providers in
the U.S. — Lightrealm culls annual revenues of $9 million with about
42,500 paid accounts.

Micron Electronics will acquire all of
Lightrealm’s outstanding stock for an undisclosed sum of cash. A definitive
agreement is expected to be reached by Dec. 1.

Lightrealm’s specialty is offering small and medium-sized businesses
critical Net tools and devices for daily operations. The company boasts a
monthly growth rate of 10 percent and provides its 10,000 subscribers with
a suite of Net management services.

“This acquisition of Lightrealm represents our commitment to being a leader
in the ‘e-services’ and Web hosting businesses,” said Joel J. kocher,
chairman and chief executive officer of Micron Electronics Inc.

“It also bolsters our e-services infrastructure, complements our Web and
applications hosting offerings, and enhances our ability to deliver the
benefits of Subscription Computing to micronpc.com customers.”

Last week, Micron Electronics introduced “subscription computing,” a
solution that enables technology managers to choose from an extensive menu of e-services and hardware products.