The Kubernetes Operator pattern has become popular as it allows packaging applications in Kubernetes native manner. An Operator enables creating multiple instances of the application that they are managing. This makes them a key building block in enabling SaaS based delivery of the applications. Today, DevOps teams are using community or in-house developed Kubernetes Operators to offer SaaS on Kubernetes. We have developed this Kubernetes Operator maturity model to evaluate an Operator's readiness for supporting SaaS use-cases.
This model has emerged from our experience of working alongside Operator authors as well as enterprises who are adopting Kubernetes and are using Operators. The model consists of a set of guidelines related to consumability, security, and multi-tenancy. The guidelines are available here.
Operators that satisfy these properties are easy to consume in multi-Operator setups, support multi-tenant workloads and are portable across cloud providers.
If you are an Operator author, use this model as a guiding framework when developing your Operator to fit real-life multi-Operator environments. If you are a Platform Engineer/DevOps Engineer, use this model for evaluating Operators for your platform needs.