An early prediction of resource utilization and its impact on system performance and reliability can reduce the overall system cost, by allowing early correction of detected problems, or changes in development plans with minimized overhead. Nowadays, researchers are using both academic and commercial models to predict such attributes, by measuring them at earliest stages of system development. In this paper, we give a short overview of existing prediction models for performance and reliability, targeting popular component-based frameworks. Next, we describe our own approach for tackling such predictions, through an illustration on a small example that deals with estimations of energy consumption.