I have found it easy to run a program that resides on another machine but, I take it that you want to tell the other machine to run a program. If the other machine is running a telnet server you can do something like the below.
First: Generate a command script using whatever telnet package you have. The script should contain the name of the other machine, login, password info, the path/name of the program to run etc. I have not had succes getting the Windows telnet to support scripts but OnNet's telent works.
Second:
ReturnValue = Shell("c:\TNVTPlus\tnvt16 myscript.ste"
Third: 'Loop for a period of time you know to be long
'enough or until the other machine does something
'you can test for
Do
v1 = DoEvents()
Loop Until 'something you can test for
Forth:
'close the telnet session on the other machine if needed
AppActivate ReturnValue
SendKeys "logout{ENTER}", True 'Send Logout command. May
'need to send "{Alt}{F4}" if other machins OS is
'Windows instead of a unix flavor.