Ask HN: Have App on Heroku, Need Analytics Input. Biz Details.

Ok, so I have this Rails app, its running on Heroku. Its making me a small bit of money, and I'd like to expand the feature set and go after a higher-margin type of customer.

My first problem is that I expect to log a crapload of events from my distributed set of tools that drive the revenue stream of the business. As such, the solution should be scalable without breaking the bank.

My second problem is that I need to report aggregate statistics from within the app (and within any other app I build in the future).

My third problem is that I don't want to build it myself. I'd rather be an expert at my own analytics platform than try to become an expert at Google's.

So, would you build the analytics system as a plugin to each app that needs it, thereby consuming the dynos and resources of the app (which may impact user experience if the dynos aren't enough and spike at times), or would you build it separately (isolated) and use APIs to move data between your analytics collection/data crunching app. Or maybe let your core app connect to the analytics app's database directly to pull data when needed?

I would love any answer you could muster. Also if any of you have ANY experience at this and would be willing to chat by phone, I'd be in your debt and would return the favor many times over when I get this business up and running. My email is in my profile, else I would love to hear your answer here in the comments.

Also, if you want to know more about how we run our business and how we got to profitability by bootstrapping, I will spill any details you would like to know about.

Thank you!