Keith D. Taylor
Analyst · Mr. Jonathan Atkin of RBC Capital Markets
Good question, Jonathan. So a couple of things. Number one, yes, we are quite optimistic about what we're doing with interconnection and how we see that continue to scale, not only within the Americas but across the broader platform. So I think the benefit that you're going to see is interconnection revenues, there was roughly a 50 basis point improvement on a total company basis in interconnection revenue as a percent of our total recurring revenue this quarter. All 3 regions were up. The company therefore as a whole was up, and that's, obviously, a net positive. Equally, from a positive perspective, we are continuing to increase, if you will, the product density in some of our deployments. And both of those are driving, if you will, more profit into the system. The offsetting part of that, of course, is our product mix and also some of our IBX. And as we alluded to, we're also being very thoughtful about some of these larger cloud-based strategic footprints that we're taking. And so what offsets some of that -- some of the successes, of course, is some of those decisions we make. As Charles alluded to, I think we're being thoughtful and very prudent about the decisions we make, recognizing overall, we believe that cash gross margins are still -- we're still driving for a 70% or better cash gross margin line. And we're still driving towards a 50% or greater EBITDA line. All that said, we also want to make investments. Again, when you look at the size of the opportunity that we see out there, and again, Steve and Charles alluded to it, in a way that when you think about trying to capture that enterprise and continue to win the cloud business that exists in the marketplace, you got to scale the business. And one of the ways that we're going to scale is, of course, adapting our go-to-market strategy, looking at the channels, looking at the solution architects, looking at how we create more demand gen, investing our technology and our technology platforms behind Ihab and Brian Lillie. So for all those reasons, I would tell you that we're making great headroom -- headway and continuing to drive leverage in the business and scale and profitability. But we're taking some of that value and we're putting it into the future of our business because we think that's going to be really important as we look towards us being a much larger company than we are today.