Channel Beat: Facebook Jump-Starts Channel Program With Workplace Offering

Facebook made its first channel play this week, launching a new enterprise product called Workplace.

Facebook tapped about a dozen channel partners to sell the product and assembled the Facebook Workplace Partner Program.

Workplace is a collaboration, messaging and social networking offering built to compete with Salesforce's Chatter and Slack.

This week Cisco EMEAR President Edwin Paalvast said Amazon Web Services is a 'hiccup' away from bankruptcy.

Paalvast was critical of the financial model behind AWS, and contrasted it with Cisco's own IoT-focused applications.

Paalvast said the AWS model is not built to turn a profit for partners, despite its 58 percent increase in sales for Q2.

Samsung officially halted production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone following several incidents in which the phones caught fire.

Taking the phone off the shelves gives competitors like Apple and Google a chance to rack up extra sales.

Samsung's potential losses from the catastrophe could be as high as $2.8 billion in Q4.

But despite the bad headlines, channel partners expect Samsung to recover.