DCOM , PHP on Linux

Hi there guys, We have a PHP application on a remote linux machine that needs to interoperate with a COM based interface on a windows machine. If both where on the same win32 machine things would have been easy , but unfortunately they aren't. What are the possible solutions available to me , i'm thinking one way would be to wrap the COM calls in a webservice on the linux side (SOAP?) , but that sounds like a lot of work. Are there any easy ways out? Anyone familiar with EntireX? Is there a way I can use that? My concern is that even if I get the linux box to chat DCOM , how does PHP know about it? Regards Conrad Strydom