*may* suck in the real world for a variety of reasons.
For X amount of data (less than a few million rows), excel is a perfectly adequate flat file database if don't need a relational database -- and many items don't. This isn't VisiCalc anymore on computers with 640k of memory.
Ajax? REALLY???? Most people I know who use Excel heavily are not programmers -- they are accountants. I know of about 1 in 50 accountants have any idea what the hell Ajax is, much less any ability to do anything with it. Why should I pay an IT consultant / IT department 1000's when I can do something that meets my needs in 10 minutes.
I'll grant that Access *might be* a better solution, but depending on analysis and presentation needs it may not be -- or again it may require programming in VBA or 10's of hours of work to get what you need.
Databases suck at analysis. SQL based crosstabs can be useful, but they also have major limitations if you are not going to drop to a programming language. God forbid you try something like finding a median of a dataset. Instead of =Median(data), its a 100 lines of code.
For smaller datasets Excel is a much better solution in many / most cases than a database solution if you don't need the relational mechanisms, joins, etc. -- which 90% of spreadsheets don't.
Libre Office's spreadsheet sucks. They cannot even get basic UI functionality that has been in all spreadsheets since VisiCalc, much less come close to the quality of Quattro of 15 years ago.