One of the key benefits of data lakes lies in the capacity of the technology to store several kinds of data in one environment. Companies can gather not only structured data, such as spreadsheet and database entries but also semi-structured and unstructured data represented by documents, pictures, logs and other files. When speaking of what is a data lake useful for, the answer depends mostly on flexibility and accessibility of this tool. Data lakes allow organizations to save raw data until it becomes necessary to use it further. This means that there will be no necessity to do preliminary work before storing data. Data lakes may be helpful in conducting analytics, machine learning, reporting and business intelligence. The other benefit is scalability, since data lakes may be used even when there is an increase of data volume. Moreover, if data lake architecture is well-constructed, then companies will be able to introduce security, governance, metadata and access management to their data. Bringing data from different sources into one place allows companies to get a more comprehensive view on their activities.