From Lotus Notes to Wikis, technology has tried to solve the need for the enterprise to collaborate. Put differently, in organizations with far-flung employees working from home or around the globe, harnessing and enabling collective knowledge sharing has been the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, while many intriguing tools and products have cropped up since the late 1980s, none have licked the problem completely.

Still, so many companies keep trying, many unabashedly flying the "like Facebook for the enterprise" flag.

Along comes Proton Media, with ProtoSphere, an application that claims to organize its three-dimensional, immersive environment around the data we use every day, starting with the Microsoft communications stack (with Lync, Sharepoint, and Outlook integration). ProtoSphere uses Lync presence, text chat, and voice. It allows application sharing (with annotation) and supports video.

In the video below, Proton Media CEO Ron Burns provides a demonstration of the technology, including 3-D data visualizations. He's also pretty funny. Take a look.

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