The document discusses building a data lake on AWS. It defines a data lake as a centralized storage platform for heterogeneous data sets that allows for ingestion, processing, analysis and consumption of data. It outlines components of an AWS data lake including storage, data movement, analytics and insights services. The document provides strategies for reducing data lake costs through data tiering, processing data in place using services like EMR, Redshift Spectrum and Athena, and optimizing performance through techniques like columnar formats and aggregating small files. It also discusses planning for real-time and streaming data analytics.