Viktor Gamov, a Principal Developer Advocate at Kong, explores the capabilities of Kong Konnect, a SaaS-managed control plane for Kong Gateway, which simplifies API management by offering features such as application registration, Dev Portal configuration, and service access management. Kong Konnect allows for different deployment modes, including DB-less, traditional, hybrid, and SaaS, with an emphasis on its SaaS offering that eliminates the need for database maintenance and control plane management. This service introduces Runtime Groups for segregating environments and regions, enhancing scalability and compliance with regulations like GDPR. A demonstration using the ChatGPT API showcases how to create services, configure routes, and utilize plugins such as Request Transformer and Rate Limiting to manage API traffic and access. The guide also highlights the process of publishing services on the Dev Portal, enabling application registration, and managing consumer groups to control access and usage limits. Additionally, Kong Konnect's ability to replicate services across different regions, such as the US and EU, with ease through configuration syncing, is emphasized as a key feature for distributed service architectures.