Background: Experienced PHP developer with a mostly *nix background.

I'm writing a PHP application that needs to interact with a proprietary 3rd party system. The 3rd party system is Windows only. The PHP application will be living on a separate Linux based system

The 3rd party application has been described as having a "COM API" that I'll need to talk to from the PHP application. What does this look like architecturally speaking? I'm starting with the COM section of the PHP manual, but I have specific questions.

Specific Questions:

1. Can I talk directly to a COM API from a PHP application running on another server? If so, how? (what PHP extensions would I need, or what protocols/PHP functions would I be using to talk to the API)

2. If the answer to number 2 is no, I'd assume I'd need some kind of application on the Windows machine that can talk to COM, and then a service on the windows machine I can hit with PHP. Are there prebuilt frameworks for this kind of thing?

3. Is this all nonsense and/or did I say something exceedingly stupid? (Quite possible, as I'm a little fuzzy on what "COM" does and doesn't cover)

I'm obviously not looking for a full solution here, I'm just trying to get a general idea of what is and isn't possible and what kind of things I'll want to Google for.

Thanks!