A request to establish a connection to a server application executed by a server device is received at a client-side authenticated-connection application programming interface (API) from a client application executed by a client device. The connection request is sent from the client device to a server-side authenticated-connection API executed by the server device. The connection request includes user identification information usable to authenticate a user of the client application with the server-side authenticated-connection API to access the server application. A connection establishment acknowledgement is received from the server-side authenticated-connection API. A handler that represents an established connection to the server application is returned to the client application as a connection establishment acknowledgement. The client application is configured to communicate with the server application using the handler over the established connection with the separate application-specific read/write API.