[nonsequitarian]

Actually, there is a fair amount of overlap between collectd and Heka. And Heka provides mechanisms for in-flight data processing and graphing output, in addition to logging and routing. But you're also right that Heka might in some cases also be used in place of syslog.

Of course, both syslog and collectd have been around and battle-hardened for many(!) years, whereas this first Heka release is being called "0.2-beta-1" for a reason. I wouldn't go rush into replacing any mission-critical infrastructure just yet. ;)