Think about the different use cases for logs. I've spent an insane number of hours thinking about it, unfortunately. Live data is useful for graphing or alerting on things. Prehistoric data which is made to be searchable is useful for troubleshooting, or doing forensics work. These use cases require widely varying types of technology to make them scalable, reliable and useful, where 'useful' is defined as saving me time and money.

I LOVE the idea of turning the idea of logging on it's head!