Yeesh. How old are the systems where you work.
And yes... 9 pin serial port.
It was essentially the "jack of all trades" connection before USB became a thing (mice, printers, data transfer, breakout boxes, etc).
However it may be a proprietary connector that is just disguising itself as a serial port. Sometimes manufacturers will wire up the 9 pins in funky ways to do a specific task. It does have what I THINK (IIRC) the standard serial port symbol above it.
They may have been added to the machines simply to be able to hook up older equipment if need be.