Web and Desktop app: How to automate test script with a few steps on one machine and few on a server

I have a manual test script with a few steps related to web application to run on one machine and a few steps related to desktop app to run on server machine. Basically need to execute a few steps on local machine, a few on server and a few steps back on local machine. Please let me know your ideas/suggestions.

I tried to do distributed testing - lot of configuration and also having security issues like not able to get remote server.

Thanks for your help.