API specialist Apigee has this week launched OAuth API to address the "pain and complexity" that the company says developers experience when implementing OAuth (Open Authorization) across several APIs. Free in its current beta form, the new tool is intended for developers building social apps with the Salesforce REST, Chatter, LinkedIn, and Twitter APIs.

Apigee explains that OAuth is an open standard that allows users to share private resources stored on one site, with those on another site, without having to expose personal credentials such as username and password. The issue at hand here (according to Apigee) is that while OAuth can theoretically make the authentication process for mobile and native apps essentially "future proof," using OAuth can be a complex and cumbersome process for developers.

"OAuth is great for consumers, but can be painful for developers. By providing a single API for using OAuth across many different APIs, this new product makes OAuth relatively pain free," said Chet Kapoor, CEO, Apigee. "Mobile, social, and cloud platforms are the new strategic channel and business imperative in the post-browser web. With developer tools such as Apigee OAuth API, Apigee continues to make it easier and faster for developers to unleash the power of APIs for building apps."

The developer challenge here is no simple matter: There is a common need to leverage and then authenticate multiple social and enterprise APIs — Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce REST, Chatter, and more as Apigee adds them — and from this point then be able to use native code libraries so that apps can be built faster. It is this task that Apigee OAuth sets out to conquer.

In line with this central product release, Apigee has also announced two new interactive API Consoles, so that developers can explore, learn, and test APIs more easily. The company also provides an enterprise API management platform for developers to ease (yet more) pain when dealing with multi-channel strategies.

The core message here is the option for enterprises to reduce the complexity of providing APIs, driving developer adoption, analyzing and understanding API usage, and easily scaling as customers' API channels grow.