1. A method for projecting hardware usage in a computing system, comprising the steps of: extracting historical hardware usage data in a computing device from the computing system, the hardware usage data characterizing hardware usage of the computing system over an historical time period; identifying a plurality of usage factors affecting hardware usage of the computing system, the plurality of usage factors comprising at least one rate factor corresponding to a rate at which operations in the computing system occur over a unit of time, and a cumulative factor corresponding to an amount of data storage consumed by the computing system; extracting historical usage factor data corresponding to at least one usage factor in the computing device from the computing system, the usage factor data characterizing occurrences of the at least one usage factor over the historical time period; and performing at least one regression analysis on the historical usage factor data in the computing device, the regression analysis determining a first hardware usage function characterizing a relationship between the at least one usage factor and the historical hardware usage data.