In a glance this looks like a move driven by marketing reasons since NXT really went anywhere in that regard.
Running a blockchain is costly and many entities don't have the expertise.
They would like to use a blockchain to solve various problems and not worry about security, blockchain maintenance, volatile coin rates. In Nxt 2.0 they will get specialized blockchains with custom features, for instance they can peg their custom blockchain token to one USD or cowry shell, or their custom blockchain will be feature tailored to their specialized usage. It's a blockchain as a service thing. They will pay block fees to the global network of ARDOR token holders when they must make a hashes record of their custom child chain operations into the main chain. It's a 'focus on your job without all the worries that come with running a blockchain' customer-oriented solution. Transactional throughput will grow manyfold.
So how is Ardor different to the other blockchain platforms like Ethereum, Lisk and Waves? And why do you think a company should choose to use Ardor over the 3 mentioned?
Nxt and Ardor very specifically did not go for scriptable Smart Contracts. There are several reasons for not doing so:
1. You have no way of controlling the quality of the code. This can lead to unfortunate results and create huge problems.
2. A large portion of the market has need for out of the box solutions, not custom ones. Nxt and Ardor offer hardcoded and modular Smart contracts (or smart transactions) which are tested and secure. For most SME's these cover a lot of use cases and are more cost effective.
3. Lisk is still in development: Nxt already works, and has been operational for 2,5 years. Ardor will use the same tech. If a company wants to use software that's tested and tried, it should go to Nxt or Ardor (depending on the use case).
4. Waves is also still in development. Same argument as before. The idea might be sound, there is no way to predict now whether it will pull off its promise.
The child chain architecture is unique to Ardor. Lisk and Waves do not have it, neither does Ethereum. Bloat is a problem that all of them have and Ardor is the system that is concentrating on it.