Yes! If one uses something like Kubeless[1], you have something like AWS Lambda, but where the backend is Kubernetes rather than AWS. Yes you're still on a framework, but it's a vendor-agnostic, open-source one. There are some other attempts at similar things, too. I am partial to this one for now.

[1]: https://github.com/kubeless/kubeless

This is what I see as the true power of kubernetes -- once people start developing high quality (hopefully open source) applications for platforms like kubernetes, providers like AWS should lose their "value-added" benefits, and be reduced to more like colo providers, maybe offering 24/7 support as well.

That will be when the ubiquitous cloud truly arrives -- run on whatever provider in the sky, and as long as they run kubernetes you can run your workloads there.

At a pure level, Lambda "integration" is essentially an interface for passing in runtime arguments+environment to your application. If you're concerned about lock-in, you can write or integrate another entry point that executes your function on on-prem Tomcat or whatever other environment (Cloud Functions?) you want to run in.

The much harder challenge would be provisioning thousands of on-prem servers to handle the load, but I wouldn't necessarily qualify a dependency on cloud-like autoscaling as lock-in.

I guess the lock-in might come as you unwittingly couple yourself to the intricacies of the rest of AWS's offerings as your app architecture grows more complex.

Well there's iron.io (which just got bought by Oracle) and there are several FaaS projects for Kubernetes such as: OpenFaaS and Kubeless.

Edit: OpenFaaS can run on Nomad as well apparently: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/functions-as-a-service-with-n...

https://openwhisk.apache.org/ backed by IBM AFAIK, but not only.

Next installment: "Running a private cloud under my desk for 1% the cost of AWS".

I'm thinking of writing a book about tower-under-desk computing. It's surprisingly common.

check: https://github.com/nuclio/nuclio high-perf serverless runs over (standalone) docker or Kubernetes or Cloud services