"These days every million counts and any shift from the capital expense of the ledger to the operating expenses is welcomed, Juan Loaiza, senior vice president of systems technology at Oracle, told El Reg."
This has not been my experience. When you move a purchase from capital to operational, you lose all of the depreciation benefits of a capital purchase. Most companies have so much cash on hand that they are trying to find good uses for their cash. As demand is down, they don't want to take their cash and invest it in business expansion. It is not as though deciding to buy new systems means you can't expand that factory, because, in a recession, you are not expanding any factories or distribution hubs or the like. I suppose there are those businesses that are in financial straights and do not have the cash on hand, but, in that case, it is supremely unlikely they would be buying an Exa as it is extremely costly, CoD or no CoD.