if you are a profitable company paying taxes, you 100% want to defer taxes (part of EBITDA) thus trade earnings for market share.
This is exactly what TCI did [1] with cable
[1] https://www.colinkeeley.com/blog/john-malone-operating-manua...
However, spending a premium on cloud services over what you could with an on-prem capital investment does not help your cash position.
His tenant of frugality would have conflicted, especially since the cloud premium can easily exceed the tax rate - that is to say, paying taxes would have been cheaper
Section in your linked article about frugality https://www.colinkeeley.com/blog/john-malone-operating-manua...
In any case, spending on this either opex or capex doesn't help you gain or lose marketshare. Conserving cash can help, so you'd want to employ the lower cost option regardless of what line of the financial statement it hits - it's not going to be cloud if you follow that thought through
If cost was equal then opex gives a tax advantage, most companies are valued on EBITDA so still may not be their priority to optimize tax spend - a lot of other methods to avoid taxes. But the environment I've operated in I choose to capex because it conserves cash (is cheaper) and improves EBITDA optics (is excluded)
On prem is maybe not the best first step but Colo or dedicated servers gives you a cleaner path to going on-prem if you ever decide to. The cost of growth is too high in cloud.
Learning how to run servers is actually less complicated than all the cloud architecture stuff and doesn’t have to be slower. There’s no one sized fits all, but I believe old boring solutions should be employed first and could be used to run most applications. Technology has a way of getting more complex every year just to accomplish the same tasks. But that’s largely optional.
I say lower your tax bill.
"not the same ting" - nnt
In other words, please explain how it makes sense to lower tax bill by shift the expenses to opex when that process involves paying more for the same utility?
The only reason to lower the tax bill is to conserve cash. The article you linked to explains it that way too.