Both Kong Operator and Kong Ingress Controller can be configured using the Kubernetes Gateway API. Configure your vendor-independent GatewayClass and Gateway objects, and Kong Operator translates those requirements into Kong specific configuration.
When using managed gateways, Kong Operator watches for GatewayClass resources where the spec.controllerName is konghq.com/gateway-operator. When a GatewayClass resource is detected, Kong Operator deploys an instance of Kong Ingress Controller to act as a ControlPlane and an instance of Kong Gateway to act a DataPlane.
You can configure traffic routing using Gateway API resources such as HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, TCPRoute and UDPRoute. These resources are translated into Kong configuration objects by Kong Ingress Controller which proxies traffic to your internal services through Kong Gateway.