A Simple Request to Sun's Employees

To All Sun Employees,

The good news is the market is totally excited about our new lineup of products - Galaxy, Amazon+, Solaris 10, our new storage lineup. Customers and journalists are pumped up, interested, and dying to get new information. Which means they're going to be pressing you for data about early customer experiences, performance, shipdates, delivery plans, etc. It is, after all, their role in the world.

For the sake of your colleagues around Sun, please do not share Sun's confidential information. There have been a few instances in recent weeks where crucial data and photos were leaked from Sun. It probably sounds counterintuitive, but this actually harms Sun's business.

The way news or media cycles work, if any information is 'leaked' to the marketplace, it radically reduces our ability to garner broad top shelf coverage - most media outlets won't cover what's already been leaked. So leaks actually have the opposite effect of what you might think - they dampen coverage, lessen interest, and complicate helping the field drive business. They also prompt customers to put decisions on hold, and put at risk the credibility of our salesforce to be 'trusted advisors' to our most important partners and customers.

As you know, I'm a huge believer in 'opening' Sun to the world - that's what this blogs.sun.com infrastructure is all about - transparency is one our best competitive weapons. But the unauthorized sharing of Sun confidential information is illegal, and against company policy.

So I would like your support and participation in talking to your staffs to ensure that employees understand the harm that can arise from intentional leaks. I'm not asking anyone to be silent about our news, or to contain their enthusiasm (I certainly can't), just sensible when sharing unannounced company information. Let's introduce ourselves to the world on our terms, not someone else's.

Thank you,
Jonathan

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Posted on 09:54AM Sep 16, 2005 | Comments[2]

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