In the current group setup there is a hierarchical structure of parent and child groups With allows for the sorting of nodes as the administrator would require. To give one such example, A parent group for the site, and then multiple child groups to separate switches and servers. With the current dependency setup it would be required to setup a dependence from the site router for each individual group, parent and children which can result in a lot of overhead to maintain and setup.
Instead of the existing setup it would be extremely beneficial to have inheritance of dependencies. This could be done in many ways, a check box during group creation to inherit dependencies from parent. Or when creating the first dependency, the option to apply to child groups or nods. In which the administrator would be presented with a menu of all related nodes and groups to select which to apply the dependency.
Just to name a few of the benefits...
Reduced setup time for dependency structure
Reduced dependencies to maintain
Greater control over how dependencies are implemented
Not to mention all the additional benefits from increased control over alerts ect.