I've asked about this before but how hard would it be for you guys to implement alert dependencies?
The easiest way I can think of doing it would be to simply let us set a "parent" device for anything, and if that device is offline don't send any alerts for downstream devices.
For example we have a testlab that has no UPS/Generator power that we monitor about 200 devices, when the building loses power we get those 200 alarms about devices being offline, when in reality there is a single 6500 as the gateway, and if that switch is offline, i know the rest will be.
We don't want to disable the offline alarms because we do want to know when individual devices drop out.