This document discusses the emerging concept of business value architecture for cloud computing. It proposes that cloud computing can be thought of as consisting of four waves or layers of innovation and business value:
1) Infrastructure cloud focuses on providing computing power as a service to reduce IT costs.
2) Application development cloud provides operating environments and tools to accelerate application deployment.
3) Functional cloud offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for areas like ERP to enable rapid process changes.
4) The final layer is business cloud, where entire business models and industry segments could eventually move to cloud environments.