Back in the boom-boom days, one of the companies I closely tracked was Sun Microsystems. There were three or four executives there, who were in my opinion, pretty straight-up with the press, and one of them was Ed Zander. The tough talking, straight shooting, Brooklyn born Zander was as candid as big company guys go. And he was really good at what he did. Well, when he took over the much-hated job as the CEO of Motorola, many did not know what to make of it. It was clear to me, that regardless of Motorola’s problems, Ed is going to cut through the fat, and get the company focused enough to inspire some faith on Wall Street. “He is shaking things up and is more assertive than previous management,” says Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities in San Francisco. Seems he has done the job quite well. Stock price has nudged up nicely – 32% in 2004 -as well! The new phones are doing well, and are much in demand, and the company has stopped its market share loss to Samsung, at least for now. Media is glomming on the fact. A spate of recent cover stories and loving headlines tell you that Ed is the man. Newsfactor is the latest to gush. “It was like doing brain surgery and cutting blood vessels with a little knife,” he tells Newsfactor about the FreeScale spinoff, in his typical colorful manner. My Business 2.0 colleague Greg Pascal Zachary chatted with him about turning around the behemoth. Not sure what the real story is but today, the Motorola COO Mike Zafirovski resigned. He was seen at one time as the next CEO, but now with Ed in full control, doesn’t look like he had a shot. I guess, Ed is going to bring in his own people.