Apache Tez is a distributed execution framework designed for data-processing applications that expresses computations as dataflow graphs, enhancing the performance and scalability of Hadoop data processing. Built on top of YARN, it allows applications to efficiently manage resources, reduce computing loads, and improve predictability while offering customizable architecture for various use cases. Tez is open source, supports interactive and batch processing, and is integrated with popular tools like Apache Hive and Pig.