The Windows mentality is one of products. If you have Product A, you can use it to talk to Product B. Whenever I've been forced to work with Windows-based systems this has been evident in the documentation. In Linux land however, integrations are done on protocols. If you have Product A it speaks Protocol X, so you can talk to your product so long as you conform your communications to said protocol.

The benefits here are huge: so long as the protocol is open, any software (critically: software you want to write) can talk to Product A and get the job done. This is why the Linux world is superior to the Windows one: transparency.