The document serves as an introduction to a big data applications course offered by Cloudera, aimed at developers looking to enhance their skills in coding and data processing using Hadoop technologies. It outlines the target audience, prerequisites, and various course objectives focused on hands-on experience with tools such as Apache Sqoop and Apache Flume. The course promises to provide essential skills for designing and building effective big data applications, integrating multiple processing engines, and understanding data serialization and compression.