I'm forced to work with someone else within the company who is running this in the Unix environment. This disconnect makes resolving issues frustrating.

Writing cross-platform Perl only takes a little more effort if you take a little time to look into the right modules for doing so. For example, for file manipulation, see the core modules under File::* such as File::Spec, as well as Path::Class or Path::Tiny. Also, you can set up a VM fairly easily :-)