Vladimir Stefanovic
Founder & Principal Azure Consultant @IronByte
Breda, The Netherlands
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20+ years in IT infrastructure, 10 years architecting Azure solutions at scale. I help organizations design cloud systems that are technically sound, cost-efficient, and built to last.
As an Azure MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer for over a decade, I work with companies, from startups to enterprises, to navigate complex Azure deployments, avoid costly mistakes, and build teams that can sustain these systems long-term. I regularly speak at conferences and contribute to the community through writing and mentoring.
I believe great architecture starts with understanding your business constraints, not just the technology. That philosophy shapes how I approach designing solutions, training teams, and advising on strategy.
When I'm not building scalable systems, you'll find me traveling and spending time with family.
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Cutting the Noise: Architecting Log Analytics for Value
The biggest problem with modern monitoring isn't a lack of data; it's having too much data that costs too much money. Most enterprises are paying for logs they will never actually use. When you’re operating at a global scale, that waste adds up quickly.
In this session, we’ll look at how to architect your monitoring so you only keep and pay for the data that actually helps you solve problems. I’ll show you how to filter out the noise before it’s even stored and how to use Azure’s different log tiers to save money without losing visibility. We’ll finish by looking at how to build dashboards that actually tell you if your system is healthy, rather than just showing you expensive clutter.
AVNM: Governing and Scaling Virtual Networks the Right Way
Managing a handful of Azure virtual networks is straightforward. Managing dozens across multiple subscriptions, teams, and regions, without losing control of your security posture or drowning in manual peering configurations, is a different problem entirely. Azure Virtual Network Manager was built for exactly that, yet many teams either don't know it exists or find the docs confusing.
In this session, we go deep. You'll get a clear picture of AVNM's architecture: network groups, connectivity configurations, and security admin rules. But also, how they compose into a governance model that actually scales. We'll cover where AVNM fits into a Landing Zone design, how Azure Policy drives dynamic group membership, and where the boundaries lie. Architecture diagrams, live demos, and real deployment decisions included.
Hub-and-Spoke is Dead: Navigating the Reality of Virtual WAN and Virtual Network Manager
The days of manually wiring up Hub-and-Spoke networks are over, but the replacement is anything but simple. We now have two heavyweights, Azure Virtual WAN (vWAN) and Azure Virtual Network Manager (AVNM), and most people are struggling to decide whether to pick a side or try to make them work together. While vWAN provides a managed, high-performance "infrastructure as a service" hub, AVNM offers the "management as a service" layer that can orchestrate connectivity across any VNet.
This session cuts through the noise to show you exactly when these services are rivals and when they are partners. We will dive into the technical "scars" of managing both: why AVNM’s connectivity groups can sometimes conflict with vWAN’s managed routing, how to handle the "split-brain" management that occurs when you use them together, and the specific architecture where vWAN provides the muscle while AVNM provides the brains.
If you are struggling to decide which architecture to bet on, this session will give you the definitive "why" and "when."
The Architect’s Warehouse: Building a Global, Self-Healing Infrastructure from Scratch
Standard setup guides work fine for simple projects, but they fall apart when you’re responsible for a global footprint where downtime has real-world consequences. If you're managing fifty sites across multiple continents, you can't afford to handle every networking glitch or security update manually. You need an environment that is built to be consistent, easy to manage, and capable of recovering from common failures without your intervention.
This full-day tutorial is about the reality of running a massive Azure environment. We’ll spend the day moving through the four core pillars of a solid architecture: getting your account structure right, fixing your global networking, automating your deployments, and making sure your security and governance actually work in the real world. Drawing from years of experience in the global logistics sector, I’ll share the actual technical trade-offs we made and the mistakes we fixed so you can build a more resilient system.
Zero Trust Networking in a Hybrid World
Your perimeter is gone. Users work from coffee shops, contractors access production from home, and your most critical workloads run in Azure. Traditional firewalls and VPNs can't protect you anymore, but most organizations struggle to implement Zero Trust without breaking everything.
This session walks you through building Zero Trust networking in a real hybrid environment. You'll learn how to implement micro-segmentation without disrupting existing applications, configure Entra ID conditional access policies that actually work with your network architecture, and use Azure Private Link to eliminate internet exposure for critical services. We'll troubleshoot common Azure Firewall misconfigurations, demonstrate lateral movement prevention with network security groups, and show you how to validate your Zero Trust posture using Defender for Cloud, without the $200K consulting bill.
AI-Assisted IaC: Fast, Convincing, and Dangerous
AI can generate a Terraform module, a Bicep template, or an entire Landing Zone scaffold in seconds. It looks right and deploys. That is exactly where the danger begins.
The misconfigured resources quietly drain budgets. The compliance gaps that slip through code review are due to the code appearing authoritative. The drift between what AI generates and what the environment actually needs was discovered six weeks later in production.
And when AI agents with MCP servers enter the picture, the stakes go even higher. Something is authenticating to your environment, making decisions, and applying changes. The blast radius is no longer a human typo. It's an autonomous process that was never asked the right questions.
This session is about those questions. The ones that don't show up in demos. The ones that separate teams that adopt AI-assisted IaC carefully from those that adopt it quickly.
Vladimir Stefanovic
Founder & Principal Azure Consultant @IronByte
Breda, The Netherlands
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