Robert Lee knows how to acquire software companies. The chairman and chief executive officer of Achievo Corp. oversaw the acquisition of several companies, including the 1990 buyout of Peter Norton Computing Inc., during a stint as executive vice president of Symantec Corp.

Now, Lee is putting his acquisition experience to work at his latest venture, Achievo, a software outsourcing company that has grown rapidly by snapping up companies in China, Germany and elsewhere. Based in San Ramon, California, the company combines local offices in North America, Germany and Japan with a back-end development capability spread across six cities in China.

Lee recently spoke by telephone with IDG News Service to discuss China, customer concerns over intellectual property, and the art of the deal. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

IDG News Service: Has the backlash against outsourcing died down in the U.S.?

Robert Lee: Well, I stopped watching Lou Dobbs on CNN so I'm probably not a good source. More seriously, it absolutely died down after the 2004 election. Frankly, during the time when the backlash against outsourcing was very noisy, the business community never really paid attention to that. Just look at how the Indian companies did during the dot-com crash and that election year. They sailed right through, growing very, very fast. Politics and media is one thing, a businessman is something else.

IDGNS: How have you addressed customer concerns over sending their intellectual property to China?

Lee: That is a concern expressed by everyone I ever talk with and it's a subject I speak to every time I speak at a conference. If I don't speak about it, people will ask me. IP protection is very important, it's something that should be a concern. But while you can reduce your exposure to the risk of IP theft, you can never eliminate it.

Sometimes people like to think there are a bunch of IP thieves out there waiting to steal our stuff. It's not true. While there are criminals everywhere in the world, the people in China, just like the people in the U.S., are generally honest and want to do a good job. It is when we don't communicate to them and educate them how to handle IP where those risk exposures occur.

For Achievo, we have some things that are unique. Because of our global footprint, we can distribute our work over multiple locations, both inside and outside China. One of our larger customers is Mercedes-Benz, of Germany. We have developed a very important piece of software for them that determines how much it costs to build a Mercedes-Benz all over the world. In that case, the IP protection procedure includes a requirement that the source code resides in Germany. We have a relationship with the customer such that the source code actually resides inside our office in Germany, not at Mercedes-Benz. This is a measure that can be put in place where it is relevant.

In China, we can also break projects into multiple locations. That is part of the reason why

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