Any non-developer can buy new faster meaner hardware and increase the speed of application excecution up to a certain extent.
And then realise that no ultra spanking hardware can save your day if you write clunky code that deliberately wastes CPU cycles and network bandwidth processing
unnecessary items and chores.
What should one do? Oh but there's more than just one thing to do.... and know.... perhaps too many.
Read
Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability.