Actually, Net::SSH2 is not absolutely required. As far as you use public key authentication, the default Net::SFTP::Foreign backend will happily use plink or openssh to connect to the remote server.

Though, in Windows, if you want to authenticate using a private password, things become harder because the module uses Expect to implement that feature but that module does not work under ActiveState (or Strawberry) Perl. An alternative is to pass the password to plink in the command line using the -pw switch but anyone able to log to the machine (or to run arbitrary programs there) will be able to see the password so I usually disrecommend this method. See the module FAQ.