More than half of eBay’s (News - Alert) listings come by way of the company’s application programming interface (API), according to Daniel Pollock, vice president at analytics firm Outsell. Using its own software, and the API from eBay, listing providers manage inventory, listings, feedback, shipping and reporting functions. An estimated 30,000 developers use eBay’s APIs at the moment.

 

That has created a growing market for software tools, allowing developers to quickly and productively create tools. There is of course a cost. A third party has to create and maintain the API infrastructure.

 

API management solutions provider Mashery now offers “on demand API infrastructure.” The company said that for less than the cost of a full time employee (services from the firm start at $2500 per month), Mashery will manage the connection to an organization's API.

 

It offers technical tools to limit bandwidth usage and handle compatibility across industry standards as well as the commercial tools to allow automated registration, so non-technical staffers can manage and measure usage.

 

Mashery itself is built on Amazon’s EP2 "compute in the cloud" infrastructure. Linkedin and Shopping.com are current customers.

 

Mashery turns the API operation into a business development function, allowing companies to "move the merchandise" rather than write, maintain and manage code processes.

 

We’ve come some way when there now is a business opportunity for outsourced API management.