We do something similar in our environment. We have a CMDB for the server environment. The server team can simply log in and check the "In Maintenance Mode" check box. This causes an email (not my first choice of notification methods, but it works for now) to be a sent to a 3rd party tool (IBM Omnibus Netcool) where we parse that email into a SQL update for an ODBC connection to the Orion DB. It updates the N_Mute custom property as well as the N_Mute_Reason field with details of who and when. When the server team is finished the simply go into the CMDB and remove the servers from maintenance mode from there.
That said, we are in the process of consolidating into an enterprise-wide CMDB where updates will happen via direct SQL updates instead of involving email.
You're definitely wandering along the right path mharvey its just a matter of finding what is available in your enterprise already and determining whether or not it can be mashed together.