A cutover is the decisive moment when traffic or services are moved from a legacy switch or network to a new infrastructure. Engineers typically run the new system in parallel, duplicate the connections, and then abruptly drop the old paths to force traffic onto the new equipment. It requires meticulous planning to avoid dropping active calls or losing data packets during the switch.
Heard on the job
We've a hard cutover scheduled for 0200 hours, so make sure the new PBX routing tables are fully verified.
Insider tip
A successful cutover is invisible to the end user, but a botched one means an all-night rollback.