Yeah it's not really "new". Lotus Improv was doing this 25 years ago, for those of us old fogeys who remember. 1-2-3 was for the secretaries, Improv for the power users.
Also, I know know of plenty of financial institutions that have mod'd Excel with Add-ins to the point where the Worksheet integrity is better than 95% of the RDBMS' I've worked with. Version controlled, full audit trails, access control lists, type validation...
Hell out of the box, you can get an out of the box Excel + SQL Server BI to essentially make an off-the-cuff Line of Business app, completely sync'd, with a Silverlight front similar to (this)[http://www.infragistics.com/uploadedImages/Content/PRODUCTS/...]
Also, I know know of plenty of financial institutions that have mod'd Excel with Add-ins to the point where the Worksheet integrity is better than 95% of the RDBMS' I've worked with. Version controlled, full audit trails, access control lists, type validation...
Hell out of the box, you can get an out of the box Excel + SQL Server BI to essentially make an off-the-cuff Line of Business app, completely sync'd, with a Silverlight front similar to (this)[http://www.infragistics.com/uploadedImages/Content/PRODUCTS/...]