He made some news last July when he decided to leave the company to spend time with his family, but otherwise he kept a low profile, gladly yielding the limelight to his media-savvy boss, Sun CEO Scott McNealy. Last month, however, Zander was flabbergasted to find articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and elsewhere speculating that he's plotting a takeover of his former employer. "All of a sudden I read all these things and said, 'My gosh!,'" recalls the 56-year-old. One part of the reports was true: He plans to join buyout shop Silver Lake Partners as a managing director this summer. (Silver Lake put out a press release to that effect on May 12.) Although Zander says Sun's strategy is "still pretty good," he has clearly moved on. "Sun's in the past, and I'm done with it," he asserts. "I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what Sun's doing." The rumors irritate McNealy, too. "There's a lot of so-called conventional wisdom about what's going to happen to us, but I wonder where that comes from," the CEO said during a May 19 press conference. "We are strong. We have $5.5 billion of cash in the bank. We'll be around for a long time."