Man, Access could've been so good if they just made an app around SQLite. Or since it's Microsoft and they need to do everything their own way, it would've been so good if they made a flat file DB à la SQLite, but with T-SQL (or a subset thereof) instead of JET-SQL.

Increase interoperability. Funnel data people from Excel into real DB technologies.

And if they did more to blur the lines between spreadsheets and databases, and make it seamless to work out of both Excel and Access, add more spreadsheet features to the data views, etc.