As an analyst/controller I work with Excel every day, let me know if you want to know about issues with Excel, there are tons of problems to solve.
Our core business case is to address the problems of distributed business processes implemented in spreadsheets. We want to continue to offer the flexibility of the spreadsheet paradigm whilst addressing the most weaknesses of the current paradigm.
This short video (when its finished) will be the centerpiece of the new release: http://vimeo.com/25937882
Point is, there must be a market out there for some functionalities that Excel does not have, it also should not be that difficult to build such a solution (call it a hunch, but I think with nosql that should be really easy to do). But the whole thing requires stopping thinking logically (of course excel makes no sense) and start thinking business(ly) (how do I get people to understand and use my solution).
I think it's only when you make a complete rewrite from the bottom up in another paradigm that you can extend the power while retaining the usefulness.
True, but again, look at the users. People with very poor IT knowledge and very scared of change. Any new solution pointing at this market will have to:1) be as easy to use as excel; 2) much better than excel (why change otherwise?).
I think that being better than excel overall is impossible, but looking into specific businesses and uses it should be.
We disagree.
Personally, I have been giving it a lot of thought and I can't come up with a complete better solution. But other (Palo, Hyperion) seems to make money on solutions that do not change the excel paradigma.
The base of users with knowledge of Excel is very large. Most organizations have a built in base of knowledge of Excel. Why swim upstream and go against that. Try to make Excel work in that environment.
Take a look at www.excelcube.com. It may be helpful.
Have you looked at google fusion table and google refine? These are powerful tools in same space for non-enterprise applications.