[February 07, 2013]

Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop Gets Cooking with Comcast Business Class Ethernet

Comcast (News - Alert) Corporation, a global media and technology company, today announced that Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop, a nationally-known creator of cakes and the inspiration for a popular television series, has selected Comcast Business Class Ethernet and Comcast Business Class PRI Trunks to help support operations at its new state-of-the-art location at Lackawanna Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. The Comcast Ethernet services will be used to transfer images, data and voice traffic between the new facility and its original flagship site in Hoboken. The Ethernet connection will support a variety of company operations that take place at the facility - including custom cake decorations and baking, cake design consultations, a call center, a cloud-based cake ordering system, e-commerce, and baking classes.

Carlo's made technology a key component when expanding its operations, with goals for increasing scale while maintaining the same high levels of quality and innovation that have led to its rising popularity and national recognition. The Comcast solution supports both data and voice traffic, with a Comcast Business Class Ethernet Private Line (EPL) between the Hoboken and Jersey City facilities, and Comcast Business Class PRI Trunks to interface with Carlo's existing telephony system. Comcast's service creates a secure Ethernet connection between the sites, and enables inter-office voice over IP (VoIP) calls for all employees.

Comcast Ethernet Dedicated Internet (EDI) gives Carlo's 50 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) of Internet performance to support "Cakeforce," a cloud-based cake ordering system powered by the Salesforce Platform for social and mobile business apps. Call center employees process and fill orders using Cakeforce, which is their customer database and will soon become their product database as well. On average, Carlo's handles 80-200 cake orders per day, but during the holiday season that can increase to 300-400 orders per day. In the future, Carlo's also plans to run accounting, finance and accounts payable on Force.com.

"We have aggressive growth plans, ranging from our new Lackawanna facility to additional retail locations," said Leo Minervini, chief information officer at Carlo's Bakery. "Comcast gives us the bandwidth and reliability we need to support the various operations that rely on the network today, as well as the additional projects that we have coming in the near future, such as videoconferencing, virtual classrooms, and the pilot for national shipping capabilities."

In the future, Carlo's plans to utilize the network for videoconferencing between the two facilities. In addition, the bakery intends to expand its popular onsite cake decorating courses to include "virtual seats" so that people can take the courses online. Carlo's is also exploring a pilot project in which certain edible products could be ordered online and shipped nationally.

"Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop is well known not only in the greater New Jersey and New York area, but all over the country," said Mike Maloney, vice president of business services for Comcast's Freedom Region. "This is a classic example of how technology can help a local company expand, diversify and even become a nationally-known brand. With Comcast's Ethernet and PRI services, Carlo's is well positioned both for today and in the future, with the bandwidth to accommodate even more technology-based initiatives."

About Comcast Business Services

Comcast Business Services, a unit of Comcast Cable, provides advanced communication solutions to help organizations of all sizes meet their business objectives. Through a modern, advanced network that is backed by 24/7 technical support, Comcast delivers Business Class Internet, TV and Voice services for cost-effective, simplified communications management.

Launched in 2011, the Comcast Business Class Ethernet suite offers high-performance point-to-point and multi-point Metro Ethernet services with the capacity to deliver cloud computing, software-as-a-service, business continuity/disaster recovery and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Comcast Metro Ethernet services are significantly faster than standard T1 lines and other legacy technologies, providing scalable bandwidth from 1 Mbps up to 10 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) in more than 20 major US markets.

For more information, call 866-429-3085 or visit http://business.comcast.com/enterprise.

About Comcast Cable

Comcast Cable is the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to residential customers under the XFINITY brand and also provides these services to businesses. Comcast has invested in technology to build an advanced network that delivers among the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings. Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) is a global media and technology company. Visit www.comcastcorporation.com for more information.

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