That's the question Savvis President Jeff Von Deylen posed when he delivered well-received remarks at this week's "CEO Viewpoints" session at SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP's annual conference in Orlando.

Reflecting on conversations that took place on the first day of the SAPPHIRE NOW conference in Orlando, Fla., it's become clear that SAP HANA's rapid access to data is revolutionizing what companies can do. Technology and marketing teams are dreaming up new ways to take advantage of near real-time access to data.

Below are a few case study examples - courtesy of SAP - that may just inspire you.

Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke had three laws for the future - one of which immediately came to mind when SAP released HANA in 2011:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Wired.com runs a community called Innovation Insights, dedicated to "new thinking for a new era of technology."  Earlier this week, I contributed this article on cloud security, reflecting on some of the interesting trends around cloud network access and the impact on customer adoption.

I encourage everyone to dig deeper when a colleagues reference "security concerns" as one of the reasons holding them back from public cloud adoption models.  What are those concerns?  Are you exposed to them today?  And how do you mitigate risk?

For years, IT leaders have been told that IT outsourcing 

Here's a hint: Core competency isn't found in fixing servers and improving network connectivity. It lies in helping the business compete by selling more, delivering more and bringing more to the market.

Six years ago, businesses considering colocation wanted to know all about the physical infrastructure - the hardware, the cooling, the facility itself. While those features are still very relevant today, we're seeing a move toward conceptual, strategic needs driving colocation decisions.

No longer are businesses focused exclusively on what is in your data center. They also want to know who is in your data center and how relationships within this data center can support their high-level business objectives.

Every week, it seems, we hear about another attack on IT security in the financial services sector.  This heightened awareness has firms taking extensive in-house precautions to raise firewalls, lock down apps and servers, and pursue other best-practice strategies.

But under the strain of constant threats and rapid evolution of new technologies, IT leaders can't help but wonder: Is what I'm doing enough?

NBC's "The Office" is set on Slough Avenue in tribute to the town of Slough, England, the launch pad for Ricky Gervais' comedic career as the star in the original UK show of the same name. 

Five years after Gervais left Slough, Savvis moved in, opening the L01 data center in 2008 to help transform what is now Europe's biggest trading business park. Demand was high from day one, and within 18 months, the first floor sold out. In 2010, we expanded.

This week marks the opening of our second Slough data center, Savvis LO5.

It's no secret that as companies' information assets continue to explode, the need to unlock the value of data grows more pressing.

This week, Intel announced the availability of the Intel® Distribution for Apache Hadoop software (Intel® Distribution), which will give more organizations the ability to make use of the vast amounts of data that are generated, collected and stored. I was pleased to participate in the event and extend a longstanding successful alliance with Intel and the other companies on stage.

The changing role of IT: It's a topic

These trends are not foreign to most technology leaders. But they are escalating in intensity, giving rise to new business needs and opportunities, and that's demanding we all rethink the way IT does IT.

Consider: 5.1 billion people on the planet own a mobile phone

In today's media organizations, user experience is almost as important as the content itself. Compelling content means nothing if the user experience is poor, and the 'it just works' expectation set by the likes of Facebook and Google means content must be delivered in the right way more now than ever before.

Just back from a trip to Europe - the perfect rally point for meeting with many of our European customers to discuss how they are using our growing London-based cloud platform and how Savvis should prioritize its development backlog.

We were also able to meet with a number of industry analysts Cloud Expo Europe and update them on some exciting new developments inside the Savvis Cloud, such as our Symphony Cloud Storage offering and the savvisdirect project.

Mobile payments: The new frontier? Possibly, if you read the analyst reports. Yesterday, Forrester predicted the mobile payment market 

This week, cloud-based mobile payments provider Mozido revealed plans to leverage Savvis' cloud and IT hosting solutions for its mobile payments platform.

We sat down with Steve Bacastow, senior vice president of operations at the Austin-based company, to talk about how outsourcing to the cloud aligns with Mozido's tailored solutions for global and regional brands in financial services, consumer packaged goods, telecommunications and retail.

Where will you be one year from today? Where will your IT organization be? What do you need to know to get there?

Last week, Savvis experts weighed in on what 2013 has in store for interoperability in the cloud, data centers that do more than house data, and growing pressures on developers and the financial industry, respectively.