When a cyclist passes on while on the road it is traditional to leave a ghost bike at the spot where he was last alive. This is known as a ghost bike. In Information Technology (IT) we have something similar known as ghost servers. These servers are ones that have served their purpose but have inadvertently still been left powered up in a data centre. A well known IT consulting firm has stated that up to 28% of servers are ghost servers.

What this means is that a significant portion of the operational bill is dedicated to resources that serve no useful business requirement!

The four P's

Many IT methodologies refer to the IT landscape as people, processes and tools. Sometimes tools is replaced with products and a fourth "P" is added known as partners. This is commonly known as the four P's. These concepts have been around for decades and are used in ITIL, as an example. My personal preference for the categorization is Humans, Methods, Things and Integration. It makes more sense in the age of cloud, fog, and mist. When we review this categorization, ghost servers would be Things.

Human Ghosts

But as clarified above that is only part of the landscape and within this landscape other ghosts also exist.

The classic example of a Human ghost is Milton from the movie Office Space. Besides making the red Swingline stapler a cult item, Milton was a ghost. Someone who worked in an IT company but didn't actually do anything.

Method ghosts

I have previously written about how we blindly do tasks in Information Technology, without knowing the reason in this article.

These are the Method ghosts. In my opinion these ghosts are more prevalent in IT that maybe even ghost servers. They are often known by another term called "best practices".

Thing ghosts

Thing ghosts are prevalent not only in data centres but often also in networking. Often when a client churns service from a service provider the networking equipment is never recovered. Sometimes the service remains connected.

Integration ghosts

The final ghost is the integration ghost. This is often the margin stacking that surrounds deals in IT. In the greater South African context, this would also fall into the area of the worst ghost of all #statecapture.

Wrap

One of the largest ISPs in South Africa closed up shop as it was never able to match invoices to all components on its inventory. There were thus a significant number of business ghosting on their network for free. Now if you had all your connections as an ISP on SD-WAN such as the one from Fusion Broadband South Africa you would not have clients ghosting on your network and you would be able to invoice every single one of them! A big deal as it could have saved one of the biggest ISPs in South Africa if they had adopted it and removed the ghosts.

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