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We live in an era where we consume computing through API and socialize through mashups. Our wide ranging computing needs from mobile apps to social networks to SaaS, brings API to the forefront of our computing senses. To cater to the needs of this API generation, Santa Clara based Sonoa Systems has already launched a service called Apigee which is still in private beta. Apigee is a freemium, self service, API management tools for Web APIs.

For websites like personal homepage or blogs, we use Google Analytics tool to get information on the website visitors and their activities. However, tools like Google Analytics are not useful with APIs. In this era where we consume everything through API, there is clearly a need for a tool like Apigee. Sonoa is already a leader in the enterprise API analytics marketplace. With Apigee, a robust service built with Sonoa’s expertise, they are positioning themselves to lead in the cloud computing and social computing era. Apigee is well suited to help any provider who exposes their services through APIs. By using the freemium, self service model, they are emulating the strategies predominant in the SaaS marketplace.

Earlier Sonoa went after the Mobile market space with a proxy service called Mobile App Acceleration. This service helped mobile developers speed up their mobile application by several fold. Now, through Apigee, Sonoa is targeting developers who develop apps for social networking platform. Apigee provides insight into the emergence of new application trends, with the most popular applications revolving around location-based functionality, as well as a growing social media mashup trend. Popular examples of applications currently using Apigee include:

• mLocal: Allows users to easily access local online classifieds ads;
• Social Mention: Providing indicators of social sentiment as captured across popular social networking platforms;
• Flickr Photosets: Built using the Flickr and Facebook APIs proxied through Apigee, it’s the fastest and most intuitive Flickr app on Facebook, enabling users to view and share comments.

Their free basic version allows upto 10,000 API requests/hour. Their premium service for higher traffic volumes is less than $100/month. Some of the significant features in the Apigee service are

• API Analytics
• API Protection
• API Control

Today the company announced the addition of some new security features that wil help the service gain further traction. To start with, there is a new revamped web interface. They have also added animated API setup and rate limiting dialogues to speed up the setup process for the users. In addition to these features, they have also added some security features like SSL support for APIs using HTTPS and opening up of prominent APIs including PayPal.

This service completely simplifies how service providers can monitor the traction, user behavior, etc. of their service at a very low cost. This is a great tool for web developers trying to mashup services from many different sources. There is a huge potential for this service in both consumer and enterprise space. As business is picking up in the ecosystems around mobile platforms and social networking platforms, a tool like Apigee could be a real game changer.